


Whumptober 2019

by Eriakit



Series: Saeri Verse [8]
Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Blood, Blood Drinking, Bwonsamdi - Freeform, Childbirth, Choking, Drink Spiking, Exhaustion, Extensively Headcanoned Burial Rites, F/M, Gen, Gore, Hir'eek, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kidnapping, Magic, Minor Character Death, Miscarriage, Murder, Old Married Couple, Panic Attacks, Serious Injuries, Soul-draining, Strangulation, Torture, Violence, Whumptober, Whumptober 2019, and by that i mean they're in their 20s but act like it, and he cant even complain bc he finds his wife hot when she rescues him, and wow using it is oddly thought-provoking wrt some of the quests in this game, he knows who would win in a fight and it wouldnt be him, i love how rakkal keeps ending up vaguely terrified of his wife but loving it, killing things as a cute date idea, loa - Freeform, rakkal is a bona fide damsel in distress at this point, such a harsh word to use but so accurate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-11-10 18:10:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 30
Words: 30,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20856059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eriakit/pseuds/Eriakit
Summary: The sand under his hand felt warm, and soft, and it wouldn’t be the first time he had slept on a beach under the setting sun.





	1. Day 1: Shaking Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sand under his hand felt warm, and soft, and it wouldn’t be the first time he had slept on a beach under the setting sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set just after the reclamation of the Echo Isles, if that's not clear.

Rakkal’s entire body trembled as he finally sat, body throbbing from his bones of his feet to the tips of his ears. His rested his rattling elbows on his quaking knees and raised his shaking hands up to his face, and watched as his palms slowly knitted together. His stomach lurched and he folded forward, arms wrapping around his head, tusks scraping against the rough leather of his leggings, to breathe through the wave of nausea.

Soft footsteps on sand came close enough for him to hear through the pounding in his head, followed by the faint tangy scent of blood and burn of spices. He gave vague thought to lifting his head to greet his wife properly, but stopped when even considering the motion made his neck cramp so hard his jaw vibrated.

Her long, strong fingers, normally so steady, shook as she slid them over the back of his neck, right where the shaking was worst. Her faint calluses caught gently at his short, thin fur. It made him relax, like it always did, which only had him folding over further, arms lax over his drawn-up knees, hands holding onto his own ears, head hanging in the shadow of his own body.

“We won, my snake,” Za’tuli whispered to him. “You struck fast and sure. Bwonsamdi is pleased with you for the souls you have fed him.”

Her voice was steady where her hands weren’t, and it put enough steel back into Rakkal’s spine to lift his head and look at her. He wife, his priestess, his love. He smiled, lopsided and wan, but honest. 

“Yeah. I’m just… tired.” He huffed a weak excuse for a laugh and Za’tuli snorted quietly at him.

“An understatement bordering on ridiculousness.” She applied the faintest of pressure to his neck with her trembling fingertip and Rakkal buckled, folding until his right hand was buried in the sand, his head on his own knee, a breeze away from falling off of the bit of rubble he was sitting on. Za’tuli laughed as he groaned, fiddling with his left ear now that his neck was out of easy reach. “You have overextended yourself. We both have. Come, my love. Rest. We have won the Isles, and the others have made a place for us to rest.”

Rakkal twitched his ear at her, wondering if he could even make it that far. The sand under his hand felt warm, and soft, and it wouldn’t be the first time he had slept on a beach under the setting sun.

His musing was broken by a sharp shot of pain through his ear. He gasped, fighting himself with a lurch, as Za’tuli continued pinching the sensitive cartilage as she took a measured step back. He scrambled to his feet, limbs uncoordinated and flailing, hands on the hot sand as much as his feet, as she chuckled at him and kept walking.

She let his ear go once he was on his feet and walking with her and looped her arm around his waist, encouraging him to lean his weight on her. They made it across the center Isle and to the promised furs - barely - before they collapsed together.


	2. Day 2: Explosion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It built up, like sparks building into a bonfire, to this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set after the reclamation of the Echo Isles, around the time the Cata quests take place.

_Every tiny irritant._

Za’tuli twitched as Najaki brushed too-close, his musky reek of foul herbs, fouler magic, and foulest intentions making her want to gag. He smirked at her, _accidentally_ dragging his shoulder against hers as he slid closer to their unfortunately-shared worktable. The work tent was cramped, but not so close-quartered as to require him to lean his hips so closely to her own as they brewed their respective potions, or for him to match her motions so precisely so as to never _quite_ stop the contact between the edges of their clothing - a constant, nagging tug she could barely-feel. She continued brewing her healing potions, and ignored him.

_Each individual event._

She shrieked in defiance and command, ending it with a snarl directly into the face of the troll beneath her. He quaked in terror of her but made no noise, the gash over his throat that his body was desperately trying to heal bleeding slower and slower. Za’tuli snarled again as she kept pressure on the wound with one hand, scooping thick healing salve onto the fingers before slapping that hand over the wound as well.

She pressed her finger into the wound, rubbing the slickness of the salve onto the deeper edges of the wound. It would do no good to heal the man’s flesh only for his blood to seep out underneath it. The troll flailed and thrashed under her as the burning, tingling herbs hit his nerves, nearly unseating her from his chest, clawing at her hide. One of his nails caught on the largest of the scales on her left thigh and she roared into his face and dug the salve in deeper, feeling vindictively pleased as his nail gave way before her scale did and his hand fell back to the sand bloody.

He gurgled at her, panting breaths splattering blood over both of their faces, eyes wide and rolling in pain and terror, before finally growing still.

Her heart lurched - but no, his pulse still thudded against her palm, calming from the riotous pounding of a moment before into something more normal. She removed her finger from his neck and slathered more slave over the surface, pressing her weight down until no blood got past her strict fingers. She breathed in the scent of the blood and healing herbs and the troll’s fear and took it all into her, letting the inherent power of it settle in her core before reaching out with her own.

A loa - small, weak, no match for her will, likely someone’s ancestor’s linginger spirit, inclined to the arts of regeneration and called to the battlefield to lend its aid - was caught up in the surge of her, and she did not ask but _demanded_ its aid. It’s power danced along her limbs and she rocked forward with it, pressing the healing energy into the troll beneath her.

She let the spirit go with her thanks before she had drained it completely, and kicked her patient in the side as she stood. He rose, shaky but whole, to a crouch. She pointed in the direction of the nearest knot of fighters and he rubbed his face against her belly in thanks before springing forward. She matched is speed, if not his direction, skidding to her knees in the sand beside the next of the wounded.

_Everything she could normally have handled with ease._

Za’tuli looked down at the corpses, seething. She felt the shadows around her coiling closer, winding around her toes, up her ankles. So many lost - and for what? A sea-witch’s pride? She wished she had been on that side of the island when they had fought her. She would have shown her what _true_ pride could do, in the right hands. Petty displays of violence and temper, no, she would have _obliterated_ her, ripped her down to the soul like she had the poor young troll closest to her before she’d even had a chance to hiss, and then scattered the cold slivers over the waves.

She had the urge to stomp her foot. She made a fist, instead, tugging on invisible leashes, snapping taut the connections between herself and ever minor loa she could feel nearby. _Find him,_ she told them, and sent them off with a shove.

Almost three hours later, she had nearly finished the burial preparations for all of the others - carefully wrapping each body, lining the giant urns with the ritual infused oils and each troll’s own blood, praying over each vessel until Bwonsamdi’s mark was imprinted onto it in the spirit-world. All that remained was the one boy’s body, the one with no faint tether remaining to guide her to his spirit. The spirits of the others were buzzing, angry, hovering all around them, disturbed by his absence. She empathized.

Just as she was about to give up and prepare to bury him soulless - better his body be protected than nothing at all - she felt the half-ignored leashes she had placed on the little loa tremble with excitement. She reeled them in quickly, and shuddered at what they brought back with them.

Tatters.

She accepted each flickering, torn portion of soul from the spirits in turn, releasing each as they handed over their burden. She felt despair welling up within her - she wasn’t sure she could repair this. She wasn’t sure she _should_ repair this. No one had ever taught her what to do when a Darkspear’s soul was wrenched into pieces by a petty naga.

She sent a runner to fetch her mother from Sen’jin, instead of running there like a scared child like she wanted to. As she waited she cradled the boy’s soul to her as if it were an infant startled by a storm, and not that of a young warrior struck down in battle. She hoped it soothed him more than insulted him. She thought it did, if she could trust what she felt from the ragged edges of it.

Zi’tanbi arrived quickly, and understood the problem immediately. She guided Za’tuli’s motions easily as they found the places where the pieces of the boy should meet and urged them to fuse together, tracing little flows and eddies of their power in the right directions to guide the healing. Faster than Za’tuli had expected there was a whole spirit laid out between them - flickering and pained, but whole, and able to heal once he had been safely ushered to the Other Side.

Za’tuli and her mother worked together to wrap the body and prepare his urn, the spirits of the other warriors watching, calm now. They seemed to press closer to the boy than they had to each other, as if lending him strength. Za’tuli did not allow herself to cry for the poor wounded child. She left him with the others once her work was complete, and made a promise to herself that she would pay special attention to his journey at the mass-funeral that would be held once the rest of the bodies were cared for.

_It built up, like sparks building into a bonfire, to this._

She crushed her herbs with careful, regular, measured movements. No energy wasted, no mess made, no supplies lost. She worked them into a fine paste with the blood and spit and nectar and juice from her vials and divided it into healthy puddles on her squares of smooth, oiled leather, laid out neatly to the side. She bundled each up securely, tied tight with a line of gut, and sealed with a small flicker of power to keep the healing magic fresh. Each bundle was stacked exactly into a perfect, growing pyramid to the left side of the table.

Najaki entered the tent again, his stench and wretchedness wafting in with the movement of the bead-and-feather-and-fang curtain. Za’tuli’s lip curled in disgust. Five more to stack.

“Zulfi.”

_Four._

She growled out her response. “If I am a _baby_ witch, Najaki, then you are a-”

_Three._

His breath was copper-and-rot over her shoulder. She could see his grey-streaked, dark hair move at the edge of her vision as he turned his head. Too-close. Close enough. “Then I’m a fit young mon,” he laughed, low and disgusting. “Able to take what I want.”

_Two._

“Then you can see how much of a lie it is by that alone,” she snapped out, nearly breaking the gut she was using to tie the second-to-last bundle shut. She heard him growl behind her and echoed it with a near-silent snarl, her own head tilting just slightly to the side as her jaw clenched, her tusk-rings glinting in the low light with the movement.

_One._

He drew in an angry breath to answer her just as she finished placing the final bundle, which meant her paste-covered hands were free when his filthy, loathsome hand slid over her thigh and under the back panel of her blood-and-sweat-and-salve stained loincloth, his thick, cracked nails clicking briefly on the gold border of it._._

And then it was _too much._

She spun with a vicious, furious screech, striking Najaki in the face, fingers curled so her lacquered nails raked over his fragile, Darkspear flesh. He rocked backward with a bellow, more affronted than pained, which gave her the perfect opening to grab the wrist attached to the offending hand. She yanked his skinny little reed of an arm out, vision blurring red in her rage, and wrapped her other hand around his elbow before yanking his arm down as she brought her knee up. Her knee struck his forearm with a resounding _crack_ followed by a gut-twisting, splintering _crunch_ as she bent-and-twisted his arm, ignoring his rabid screaming as she used the mangled limb to shove him out of the tent.

She shoved him down to the ground by his arm, heartbeat thudding in her ears, everything washed in red-and-grey-and-blood. She could hear, faintly, through the pounding in her ears, the others crying out in shock and letting out little cheers and catcalls - and then, under the bright, hot sun, the tight knot that had been in her chest since the battle for their home had started, the twisting, burning bundle of it, _exploded _all at once.

She burst with it, limbs moving, a flurry of violent movement. She kicked out at Najaki, the balls of her feet striking him squarely at the hinge of his jaw, sending his head skidding tusks-first through the sand. She couldn’t stop once she had started, and every breath was another kick until she twisted down after a strong blow to his ribs and sat on his back, pulling his head up by his heavy, beaded braids with one hand as the other drew the curved dagger she used to draw blood for her potions. It was kissing the fur at his neck when something made her stop.

_“Enough!”_ was her mate’s voice, loud and low and final. Her fingers clenched around the hilt, making the edge dance over Najaki’s throat as he sobbed and whimpered, not enough air in him to scream and he had been. Za’tuli turned her head, raptor-quick, teeth bared at Rakkal.

Rakkal was steady, level, solid, walking calmly up to her as if she wasn’t close to going for _his_ throat, as well. How _dare_ he interrupt, _interfere._

He raised his hands, empty and flat, nonthreatening, and her angry hissing subsided at the gesture of submission. He knew, then, to not come to the aid of this - this -

“Let’im go, Za’tuli.”

She _shrieked,_ long and high and rattling, nearly drawing her blade across the throat it hugged so tightly in sheer defiance. But then Rakkal was there, hand on hers, prying her hand away from Najaki’s throat and pressing his thumb into her wrist to disarm her before she had realized he was close enough to reach her.

She struggled as he dragged her off of her prey - they were nearly of a height, now, no longer more than a foot between them as there had been when they first came together, and she was heavier, denser, than his thin frame, but it didn’t seem to matter. He wrenched her off of Najaki with a grunt, arms wrapped one-over-one-under her breasts to try and keep a grip on her as she writhed and screeched in fury.

Her fighting tipped them both over before they’d gone too far and they landed on their asses in the sand, the calls of the crowd twisting to laughter. She continued her flailing but it weakened rapidly as the exhaustion of the past few days weighed her down as her rage cooled, and soon her husband’s legs were twined around hers, tangling her up like stranglekelp.

Or a python with its prey.

She gave up with a huff, collapsing back against Rakkal suddenly enough that he grunted from the sudden dead weight on his chest. They lay there for a moment, panting, as the sounds of barters won-and-lost rustled around them, peppered with laughter. She felt a flicker of amusement as her rage faded.

At least the tribe’s spirits were lifting.

Rakkal twisted his head to where he could meet her gaze, expression doubtful, but he trusted her when she nodded at him. He still kept a hold of her as they rose, however, and she smirked wrly. Her mate was an intelligent man. He knew her temper was controlled, not _gone._

They had just regained their feet when Najaki seemed to regain his breath, coming unsteadily to his hands and knees. He spat out a mouthful of blood, and Za’tuli had nearly dismissed the cretin when the idiot _spoke._

“Didn’t think you had it in ya, boy. Thought you’d never get proper control of your woman.”

Za’tuli barely registered the rustle of the tribe around her, the crowd’s attention caught once again. Her whole body twitched as her anger flared up again, licking hot up her spine. Rakkal’s arm was a steel band around her waist before she could even properly turn in Najaki’s direction again, and she sneered at him in irritation.

Rakkal sighed, taking a silent, deadly moment before he answered. “Your hide is mostly in one piece right now, old man. Go away and lick your wounds before that changes.”

Najaki sneered up at him, getting unsteadily to his feet. “What’re you gonna do, boy? Risk your own skin over the little zulfi?” He spat again, and Za’tuli leaned with all her weight against the hold around her middle, desperate to wring his scrawny little throat. “We all know you never do any fighting unless the other man doesn’t know you’re there.”

Rakkal sighed again, shaking his head. “It’s not my fight.” He rolled his eyes as Najaki snorted. “It’s my wife’s. And if you say another word, I’ll let her go to break something else of yours.”

“You wouldn’t _d-”_

Rakkal’s grip was gone so suddenly Za’tuli lurched forward, nearly losing her balance before she turned it into a full-out charge. Najaki reared back with a terrified squeal and the crowd roared with laughter, egging her on - but before she could get her hands on him he had darted backward with surprisingly speed, wriggling through a gap in the crowd before she could follow.

A hand closed on her upper arm as she tried, and she turned back to snap her teeth a hair's-breadth from the tip of his husband’s nose. He lifted an eyebrow, and she scowled at him. But he was right - Najaki had run from a woman in front of everyone. It would hurt him more to let him live, now. She let Rakkal lead her home, and pretended to not notice it when his sister handed him a hefty pouch from the brief betting pool.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Zulfi" = "baby witch", corruption of the voodoo master prefix, "zul". It is a derogatory term for female witch doctors, but some females have taken on the title as a mark of pride. (per the Zandalai WoWwiki/pedia pages)
> 
> Yes, Rakkal bet on his wife kicking a man's ass. His sister bet she'd kill the prick no matter what Rakkal did. Yes, I have Feelings about how they killed Zuni. (That quest HURT.)


	3. Day 3: Delirium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He tried to think through the pounding in his head. Where were his children? The twins, his beautiful boys, they had just been here, hadn’t they? Or their little brother? Someone had been here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And all-a-sudden we're in BfA era!

Wide, soft fingers wiped the sweat from his brow. He heard the feeling like the faint rustle of palm fronds in a breeze.

His foot had hit a palm frond. She had seen him. She had smiled. They had danced - no, that had been later. They had spoken. She had left, and he had waited, impatient and burning in the sun. She was so gorgeous.

A laugh rang out. Her laugh. He twitched - he hadn’t been close enough to hear her laughter that clearly. It was beautiful, though. Like her. Every part of her, her strange scales on her green, hairless hide, her bright eyes, her golden collar. Perfect.

More laughter, and he smiled, feeling his lips stick and click-click-drag over his teeth, his tusks. It made him thirsty. He was thirsty? He had been thirsty? He had never been so thirsty.

Something cool and wet and rough touched his tongue and he bit down and started suckling on it, suddenly desperate. Something held the other end of the - rag? Yes, a rag, and it smelled like herbs and tasted like dirt, like his mate’s hands - someone tried to take the rag away and he growled, eyes flying open.

When had he closed his eyes? Why was it still so dark?

Za’tuli!

He let go of the blessedly wet rag when she tugged on it again, and then took it again when she brought it back to his lips, wet with water again. She was looking at him with amusement. He wrinkled his nose at her as he suckled at the cloth. He hadn’t done anything amusing, it was just hot. He’d been out in the sun all day, watching her chase crabs and dance in the surf.

Or had they been dancing? They had danced for so long, feet covered in sand, bruises from each other’s teeth here-and-there from the night before. His back had stung where his sweat met where her claws had scratched him. The tribe was so happy at the news of a child they wouldn’t let them stop danci-

Where was his child?

Where was his daughter? He had been with her, hadn’t he? He hadn’t been dancing, he’d been hunting, his bebe running at his heels. Her first hunt. She had been there, with him, when the snake -

He lurched up off of his back, sending Za’tuli sprawling backwards off the edge of their bed and onto the floor. He felt a surge of panic - the baby, they had been dancing to celebrate the baby - no, his baby had grown, he had been hunting with her - or had he been with the twins?

His head spun and his chest clenched and all the air left him is a dizzying rush, the floor rising up to meet him. Strong hands caught his shoulders and words buzzed around his ears - his mate’s voice, but why was she so angry? They were going to have another baby, it was a glorious day. So many children, the tribe was so pleased with them. Finally accepted them. Accepted their babies.

He tried to think through the pounding in his head. Where were his children? The twins, his beautiful boys, they had just been here, hadn’t they? Or their little brother? Someone had been here.

Someone had been with him.

His daughter. Where was his daughter? She couldn’t be left alone so young. His only baby, his precious girl. They had to find her. He had to keep her safe. They had been hunting - the _snake -_

His breath whistled and wheezed and it felt like daggers stabbing into his ears, but he ignored it. He had to find his daughter. The snake. It had gotten too close. Why had he had the baby with him in the jungle? He wouldn’t have gone with her, she was too small. It was too dangerous, Bwonsamdi’s favor hanging around her like a cloak or no. No. It had been his other daughter - his eldest - they had been running.

He had been running?

Where were his _children?_

When had he had children?

He clawed at his own head, curling forward even as his wife’s hands pressed him down again. Everything was slick-slippery-gone, thick and soupy sliding through his fingers. He batted at Za’tuli - he didn’t have the energy tonight. Didn’t they have enough children?

His heart clenched as she laughed at him. Oh, he had been a fool. Things had been going so well, at the tree, but perhaps she hadn’t meant it. He tried to beg for forgiveness - he had thought she wanted - loa, please, please let her not tell her mother. He would be _skinned._

Terror shot through him. They had had so many knives. So many cauldrons full of blood. They wanted his blood for their magics and they were going to have it, going to draw out his blood and then use his hide for their tents and his bones to make more blades to kill more people. They wanted everyone’s blood.

He had to protect his children. Where were his babies?

He sobbed, confused. Where had he been? Where were they? Where was Za’tuli? She would be able to save them. She knew how to fight these magics far better than he did. She would save their children. But where was she? Had they already gotten her?

He cried out for her and could hear no answer through the vicious pounding of the blood trolls’ war drums and the sharp shrieks of the bats ringing out from the pit in the center of the camp. He struggled against the blood troll pinning him down, and then there were more hands on him - smaller than the one sitting on his chest, little hands. Did even the children help them with their disgusting rites? Would they use his ribs as teething-sticks?

He struck out with his foot when the grip on his ankle slipped and heard a bat shriek. He bellowed for Za’tuli, for his children, tears running down his face and flooding his ears.

He heard a snarl, and smelled something horrible the next time he drew breath to yell again. Then nothing.

***

Rakkal groaned as he regained consciousness. His stomach felt like Taz’rin had taken his warhammer to it, his head felt like it had broken in a few places and been stuck back together with makrura-gunk. He gagged at the thought and got jabbed in the ribs by a small foot as one of the many small bodies curled around him leapt off the bed.

Before his body could decide if the time had come to die, or simply vomit, or maybe just pass out again and to the Void with it all, a wooden bowl knocked painfully into his face.

“Ow,” he whispered, his throat sore for some reason. He pried one dry eye open and saw the pointy little face of his youngest son leaning over him, holding a bowl half as big as he was. His son jammed the edge of the bowl into Rakkal’s jaw again, looking very serious.

“Ma’da said not to throw up in the bed,” his son told him with an air of great finality. Rakkal agreed with the seriousness - Za’tuli was known for her temper when the bed was dirtied.

He groaned pitifully as he levered himself up to a sitting position, moving slowly both for his own comfort and to try and not wake the tiny beasts currently wrapped around his various limbs. He frowned. Why were they on his _legs?_ He could never keep them from doing their best to break his ribs, all piling on top of his back of chest like wolf puppies.

The curtain to the bedroom was suddenly yanked open, letting Ina flood of bright, burning, painful, hideous, evil sunlight. Rakkal felt back into the furs and blankets with a weak cry, covering his face with his hands, feeling like he’d just been stabbed in the eyes. Or possibly set on fire. Or maybe both.

Za’tuli’s voice was relieved-and-amused when she spoke. She spoke _far_ too loudly. “Finally. I had not thought I had used enough to keep you down for so long.”

Rakkal squinted up at her from between his fingers. “Used _what_, you devil-witch?” he muttered, and promptly hit his dry, floppy tongue in the attempt. He whined. The entire world was trying to kill him, even his own _teeth._ He’d thought he could at least trust his teeth. They’d served him well so far.

Za’tuli cackled at him, which did two things. The first thing it did was send a lightning bolt of pain through Rakkal’s head, which only confirmed his theory that his wife had decided to kill him, slowly, for something he couldn’t seem to remember. The second was far worse.

It woke the rest of the children.

The first to burst into action were the twins, as always - one clambered up to stand on Rakkal’s belly and _bounced_, nearly sending Rakkal’s stomach into full revolt, while his brother began poking and prodding at seemingly random bits of skin, yelling high-pitched questions directly into Rakkal’s ear. The babies made soft noises from their cribs but didn’t scream, at least, but then his toddler scrambled up between her brother’s legs, sending him crashing down to sit bony-rear first on Rakkal’s knee, and then she slapped him happily in the face.

He very gently pulled her up to cover his face with her belly, mindful of his tusks, and then rolled onto his side, sending small boys tumbling. His little girl continued to smack his head, but she could only do so much damage, tiny as she was, and her fat little belly blocked out most of the light. He whimpered as the twins resumed their yelling, joined by their little brother, and then Za’tuli’s voice cut through the torture like a meat cleaver cutting through a bone.

He was fairly certain it cut through his skull, too, but that didn’t seem to matter.

_“Out,_ brats. Leave your fa’da be. Take your sister.”

His gleefully slapping-and-babbling light blocker was lifted gently away from him and he hissed as the light attacked his eyes again. But the curtain swung shut behind them, blocking most of the light _and_ the sound, and he was left blinking up at his exasperated wife, the cooing and gurgling of the triplets easy background noise in the dimness, and his eldest daughter muttering to herself about _idiot males_ somewhere down by his feet.

He lifted his head with great effort to agree with her - and stopped, gut clenching, head suddenly spinning again as the dark bruise on her cheek caught his eye.

She’d been by his feet.

He remembered fighting, remembered the haze in his mind, flashes of the horrors of Nazmir, but - but he hadn’t been there, he’d been _here,_ and he’d -

Rakkal rolled forward and up, unsteady but determined. Ta’liki seemed surprised as he grabbed her and hugged her to him, hissing out apologies through the nausea rolling in his gut. Za’tuli cursed at him as he started listing to the side, taking his daughter with him, and propped him up against her hip so she could use her hands to pet Ta’liki’s hair and flick his ear at the same time.

“She is fine, you idiot,” she muttered and Rakkal flicked his ear at her in dismissal. She pinched it in retaliation, but then sighed. “You were delirious, Rakkal. She knows.”

That didn’t make it any better that he’d kicked his own daughter hard enough in the face that she still had a bruise hours later, even with her regeneration, and they both knew it.

Za’tuli sighed and nudged them over, joining them on the bed. Ta’liki rolled her eyes as she was dragged down to join them when they laid down, and Rakkal’s heart clenched up all over again when he realized she took up nearly as much of the bed length-wise as her mother did.

They stayed there until the babies needed to be fed. Za’tuli reminded him of what had happened - the demons of the Legion had _nasty_ poisons, and Rakkal had been a bit too slow moving out of the way of one during their latest attempt to get a foothold, this time on the beach south of Sen’jin. His daughter tolerated his guilty looks only so long before she kneed him in the belly, and then she took a nap. Rakkal did his best to stay awake until her bruise faded completely, and failed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two notes:  
1: Yes, they have 8 children. And counting. Yes, they're a bit insane.  
2: It's a canon jungle troll tradition that children don't have proper, public names until they've "proven themselves in battle". Za'tuli, being Zandalari, has picked out names (with Rakkal) for them, but Rakkal, being a Darkspear, doesn't use their names much/in public and so isn't in the habit. Except for the eldest, who has proven herself and has a name, per tribe standards. I HC the tradition is dying out with introduction of other species in the Horde, but it's still A Thing. (And a pain in the ass to write around, sometimes.)


	4. Day 4: Human Shield

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her head spun, vision darkening around the edges. Why didn’t it kill her?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Legion era!

Za’tuli choked against the hold on her neck, heels leaving the ground, toes scrabbling. The demon laughed wetly in her ear, specks of burning blood flying from its lips. She spared a moment to feel vindictively pleased - her spell _had_ damaged it. Good. She wouldn’t be the only one dying tonight.

But its hold on her didn’t tighten, didn’t crush her fragile neck in the bunch and clench of the muscles of its arm. Instead it held her, tiny head bent low into her neck. Her head spun, vision darkening around the edges. Why didn’t it kill her?

A shadow moved at the edge of her vision and her heart leapt in joy - her mate still lived, even after being thrown by the demon - and promptly plummeted through her stomach as she _understood._ Silver eyes gleamed at her and she tried, desperately, to tell him to run, to leave her.

But he wouldn’t have listened anyways.

The demon laughed again, smug-sounding but a little breathless. She hoped her magic _burned_ where she had sent it into its gut. “Come out, little sneak.” The arm squeezed a little tighter around her throat and she scrabbled uselessly at it. “I can smell you on her. Come out, and I will kill you both quickly.”

Another shift in the shadows, and the demon turned them to face it. Rakkal would not be able to catch it by surprise, and could not have killed it before it crushed her throat anyways. She shut her eyes - not in defeat, but in determination.

It would feel it, this close, if she drew the Light into herself to attack it. It would feel like a fire building in its arms. But if it was not the Light…

And if it did not build within _her…_

She ignored the demon as it taunted her husband further. Instead, she reached out to the angry souls rustling in its wake.there were some whose forms she could not recognize - _many_ whose forms she did not recognize - but she understood their reasons for trailing in this thing’s shadow.

They wanted vengeance. She would assist them.

She wrapped hasty, thin threads of flickering shadow around any she could reach, tugging them towards her. A few fought, snapping the threads, but most of those drifted toward her anyways. They were curious, angry. She encouraged them as her chest burned from within. _Yes, be angry. Yes, come together. Yes, embrace me._

The souls ranged from the tiniest, tattered wisps of power to full, solid-seeming forms, and every one of them reacted the same. They rattled like thrown knucklebones as they juddered and shook towards her. Closer. Closer. Wrapping over her skin like a silk robe, slithering like snakes between her fingers, her toes, her teeth.

She wound them tighter, closer, angrier, her bonds growing stronger, thrumming with their shared energy. She built them up with hurried whispers of honor and revenge, of blood and glory. She whipped them into a frenzy, and right as the demon began to feel them like a cold breeze over his grave - she set them loose with a burst of power.

It was like a candle flame lighting up a barrel of goblin powder.

The demon was rocketed back, arms flung wide and skin cracking with the cold, hungry vengeance of the dead everywhere he had been touching her. Za’tuli dropped to the ground and rolled, feeling the wind of Rakkal’s movements as he leapt over her silently. A broken gurgle cut off the demon’s screams, and Za’tuli raised her head slowly.

Rakkal was pulling his blades free of the demon’s neck, carefully wiping them clean on the thing’s ragged tabard. “Took you long enough, woman. My legs were falling asleep.”

She grinned at him, hearing the shakiness of relief in his voice and loving him all the more for keeping his wits. “Well if _someone_ had not gotten himself tossed over a hill like a rock skipped by a child, perhaps that encounter would have gone faster.”

He snorted and crossed to her, offering her a hand up. She took it and pressed into his space as she stood, dodging his tusks to press a kiss to his mouth. _I am alright. We are alright._ She quirked her brow at him as she pulled back and he sighed at her. “What’m I gonna do with you.”

She snapped at the air between their faces. “Kill demons. Go home to our babies. Maybe make another.”

He shuddered with exaggerated terror, stepping back. “Loa willing, the demons’ll kill me before that happens. Four toddlers at one time is more than enough for me.”

“Do not forget the twins.”

He slid into the shadows as they started off, towards the next knot of demons, and she could hear him laugh but not see him. “They make forgetting ’em impossible.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This poor man, honestly. I love these two so much. Comments welcome!


	5. Day 5: Gunpoint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rakkal trembled as the gun cocked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rewind back to Vanilla-era, before they're even married. Running around killing Kul Tirans. *sniffs* Ah, memories.

Rakkal trembled as the gun cocked. The noise of it was metallic and unnatural against the faint sound of the sea lapping and rushing at the nearby shore. He felt as if his ears had become hypersensitive even as his vision narrowed to a small patch of dusty, orange earth between his blue hands. The terror pounded through his veins, the sudden realization he was going to die with human metal in his skull. It kept his ears sharp and his eyes down and his thoughts slow. His arms shook as he heard _everything -_ the buzzing of flies over the corpses of the human invaders he had killed before being knocked to his knees. The rustling of the palm fronds. The clatter of the crabs. The quiet crunch of a heel sinking into the sound, accompanied by the brush of fabric and the faintest of jingles, metal against metal.

Wait. His breath hitched in his chest as he heard the spring inside the human’s gun whine at being compressed. He could picture it - the unnaturally thin, spindly finger clenching tighter, slow to savor the moment, the human, normally so small, looming over him.

Za’tuli, creeping up behind them.

Rakkal slid his arms forward and his legs backward, flattening onto his belly so fast and so hard he slammed the wind out of himself. He choked an inhale, coating his throat with dusty earth, and his noise was mirrored behind him. He ignored his spasming lungs and made himself roll onto his back. What he saw made him grin through the shaking in his limbs and his hitching breathing - Za’tuli, teeth bared, hands clenched and raised as if she were taking a garrote to the human’s throat. But instead of simple steel wire or thin-dry gut, she used the shadows themselves.

The shadows wound round and round the human, over his frozen limbs and gurgling throat and panicked face. Rakkal could see the insanity creeping into his eyes just ahead of Za’tuli’s shadows as they filled his silently screaming mouth. The bands thickened, undulating like a python, crushing the human’s body and feeding on his sanity all at once.

Rakkal’s veins burned for an entirely different reason as he leaned back on his elbows, hiding how they still shook. Za’tuli was glorious in her rage, tusks gleaming, eyes flashing, throat trembling visibly with her growl. She looked _hungry,_ and Rakkal blamed his breathlessness on the now-passed winding he’d done to himself. She was glorious.

He realized she was glaring at _him_ slightly too late to avoid the sand kicked into his face.

“Some courting hunt,” she snarled. Spat out dust and sand as she kicked more at him, burying his ankles. “You idiot! You are the sneaking one! You are the one who -” she stopped herself, and Rakkal spit out a bit more sand and looked at her closely. It struck him like a bolt of lightning strikes a tall palm.

She had been _scared_ for him.

He grinned up at her, showing teeth like a raptor. “Didn’t know you cared, sweet thing.”

She made a wordless noise of rage, and he spared a thought to the humans milling about the ruined keep not too far away before dismissing it. All the ones that could have been drawn by the fighting already had been. He rolled up onto his knees and shuffled closer to her, tilting his head back to rest his chin on her thigh. He waved an arm in the general direction of the half dozen or so humans he’d finished off before one got in a lucky hit. “Admit it, we did pretty good.”

She softened for a moment - then rammed her knee into his chest, sending him back into the dust with an _oof._ He chuckled flipping onto his belly and then his feet to follow her as she stormed off toward where the rest of the humans lurked. But then she turned back to him, freezing him in place with a considering look.

“Yes. You did well.”

Rakkal couldn’t help but shimmy in place in glee for a moment after she turned back to their target, then rushed to follow her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter than usual because my first day back at work! Please end me! But first, leave me a comment/kudos?


	6. Day 6: Dragged Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She yanked on the whip and the force of it slapped him flat on his back in the dirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Legion era!

Rakkal laughed as Taz’rin charged at him, dancing away on light feet. His little brother’s bulk of muscle had many benefits, but turning quickly wasn’t one of them. He missed Rakkal by several feet, twisting sideways and sliding shoulder-first into the sand. One massive hand swept at Rakkal’s ankle, nearly dragging him down, but Rakkal hopped over it.

“Not today, Taz! You won’t get me that -”

A solid weight hit him from behind and Rakkal went down like an orc after a dozen drinks at Brewfest. He just barely turned enough to take the impact on his shoulder instead of his nose - or tusks - and he still ended up with a mouthful of nasty-tasting dirt. He spat it out as his brother roared with laughter, and his treacherous wife snickered from where she sat on his back.

He got even with her by flipping over too fast for her to catch herself, sending her flying into Taz’rin’s face as his brother lumbered to his feet. They both went down with twin shrieks, and then Za’tuli was screeching as Taz’rin cackled, purposefully messing up her hair and stealing whatever bits of jewelry would come off easily.

Rakkal chuckled as Taz’rin and Ren’jai started a game of keep-away with his wife, wondering how she’d get them back for this and if she’d do it here, on the Broken Shore, or wait until they’d gotten back to Sen’jin and his siblings thought they were safe. He snorted as his sister had to fling a bracelet to Taz’rin to keep it away from Za’tuli, his wife roaring in fury and dropping from where she’d climbed halfway onto Ren’jai’s shoulders.

He left them to it, wandering off to find where someone had dug a latrine or _something_ on this loa-forsaken rock. He really didn’t feel comfortable taking a piss where any stray demon might see.

***

His first mistake, he would think later, had been not informing anyone of where he’d wandered off to. His second had been going alone, even within the extended boundaries of the camp. His third had been assuming that he was safe within that boundary. His fourth had been exiting the outhouse with his head down, having not finished lacing his trousers before leaving. His final - hopefully not _truly final_ \- mistake had been pausing before drawing his daggers at the sound of a hoof scuffing over dirt, the presence of tauren and draenei in the camp be damned.

The succubus had her whip wound around his throat like a leash and collar before he could react, and she threw his daggers off his belt with little slashes of slick, dark magic before he’d quelled the instinct to scrabble at the rank leather wrapped around his neck to grab them. 

She yanked on the whip and the force of it slapped him flat on his back in the dirt. He clawed at the ground with fingers and toes, flailing for something, anything to grab a hold of. But nothing held up against her steady pull as she dragged him with unnatural strength over fel-rotten grass and reeking, ashy earth. His heart pounded in terror as they moved further and further away, darkness sepping at the edges of his vision, and his lungs _burned,_ a surge of panic lancing through him as he realized he was losing consciousness. He raised his hand, fingers shaking and blurred, and silently begged for someone to see - for anyone to see - for - _Za’tuli - _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >:3c


	7. Day 7: Isolation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There wasn’t even moonlight here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2, takes up right after the last one :)

He awoke with a splitting headache. Everything was dark, so dark he at first didn’t realize his eyes were already open. He blinked repeatedly, trying to adjust to the lack of light, and couldn’t. There wasn’t even moonlight here.

Wherever “here” was. 

He slowly shoved himself up into a sitting position, limbs shaky. He could remember most of how he got here, but not much after hitting the ground. His headache could be from lack of air, hitting a rock with his head as he was drug off, magic, or something else he couldn’t think of with the pain shooting through his skull. He curled up on himself, running his hands over his shaved scalp, soothing and checking for wounds in one motion.

Nothing. Not even a bump. Not an impact, then.

The place he was in wasn’t cold, or wet, but it was as silent as it was dark. He scrunched his toes against the ground beneath him and they dug into oddly warm, dry soil. No matter how much he moved his feet he never reached stone or any other flooring - a hole or burrow, then, not a room. But definitely a prison.

Or possibly a grave.

Anxiety shot along his nerves at the thought, but he did his best to ignore it. He’d heard stories about night elves using holes in the ground as prisons, or quiet places for their druids. Given he had moved around quite a bit as he sat up and hadn’t bumped into anything, it was probably something along those lines. The Broken Shore _had_ once belonged to the night elves, afterall. It was more reasonable to think he’d been taken to one of those than that they had dug him a grave this large.

The thought of night elven prisons gave him another thought. _Every cell had a door. _ He carefully scooted backwards, feeling his way until he hit a wall. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d woken up - his headache made him feel muzzy, detached, and the panic wasn’t helping his sense of time - but it couldn’t have taken him more than a couple minutes of slow movement to reach an edge. He nodded to himself, swallowing harsh and dry. It couldn’t be that large a cell, then… unless they’d thrown him all the way to the back.

He dug out a small trench in the dirt so he’d know where he started, and then began crawling along the wall, left shoulder rubbing against it and sending little showers of that strange dry-warm dirt over him. He made it back to his little trench in only a few minutes like that, and his hands shook as he felt at the edges.

Such a small space, and no door to be found.

A creak sounded above his head and there was a sudden flash of light, and then a soft thump. It was dark again before he could do more than flinch. He sat there, ears vibrating with how tensely he was holding them, waiting for any sound, but there was nothing to hear. He was still completely, utterly alone.

He hesitantly crawled forward until his fingertips brushed against what felt like leather. He felt the object all over, finding a strap and a small opening on its round edges. He opened it and took a sniff, then a taste - water. The discovery was both welcome, and painful. He was no longer thirsty… but if they were giving him water, then they planned on keeping him for a while.

There wasn’t a single chance that that was a _good_ thing.

He had no idea how long he sat there, alone in the dark, his own noises growing steadily louder to his own ears, before he managed to convince himself to doze and save his energy for the next time something opened up that hatch above him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *giggles*


	8. Day 8: Stab Wound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The succubus caught his eyes again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 3~

The next time the hatch above his head opened it wasn’t a water skin that dropped down. The succubus that dropped down was larger than the one that had brought him in, and her whip had metal teeth along its length. She smirked at him as she ran a long, black claw over the red skin just under her collarbone. Her eyes burned into his and he saw her mouth move but there was a buzzing in his ears and a seeping darkness filling up the back of his mind, and he couldn’t hear what she said.

He came to with a gasp as she shrieked in frustration. He had moved. He was standing, back to the wall, palms pierced through with blackened metal, pinning him in place like a bug being studied. He gasped again, the shock and pain bubbling up from underneath something dark in his head. The succubus slapped him, screeching angrily in her demonic tongue, and all he could do was gape at her and heave for breath through the pain, everything muffled under the oozing wool in his thoughts.

Her eyes were so angry. He grinned, not quite remembering what he’d said, but enjoying, briefly, that it had pissed her off.

He sobbed as he came to again, body rocking with it and setting off more spasms of pain. He could feel air passing _through_ his hands - the holes in his hands - as he lifted them to put pressure on the suppurating wound in his gut. He was curled up, face close and personal with the wide gash low in his belly. It smelled foul, rotted, weeks old, the pus seeping from it reeking like death. 

How could it have been that long? It couldn’t have been that long.

A pointed hoof made solid contact with his thigh and he groaned. His head buzzed angrily. Another blow, and it was like the succubus had beaten the realization into him - her magic. Her foul, corrupting magic had set his flesh to rotting.

He cried out as she kicked at him again - not at the blow, but from the pain of pressing down harder on the wound. _Keep pressure on it,_ Za’tuli always told him. _Keep the pressure on it and do your best to heal, and I will fix the rest._

He pressed down, ignoring the repeated kicks along his back and legs, and focused on healing the sucking split in his belly. The rest could wait. Could be mended by Za’tuli when she got there. Just keep the pressure on it.

Another hit to the spine made his head jerk back and the succubus caught his eyes again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cackles evilly*


	9. Day 9: Shackled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was the only place they could have hidden Rakkal in the area the spirits had lead her to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A day or two after the last one :D

Za’tuli crested the small, charred hill on her fingers and toes, belly pressed almost flat to the earth. Every breath kicked up a puff of stinking, fel-tainted dust as she moved slowly and carefully into position. She made less noise than Ren’jai and Taz’rin behind her, but so much more noise than the elf creeping at her side that she felt loud and clumsy by comparison.

Saeri turned to look at her, jerking her head to get her bright red hair out of her eyes. The grin she gave Za’tuli was grim but _vital_, a rictus of adrenaline and determination and her sheer, near-suicidal thrill of the hunt. Za’tuli had long respected Saeri, but she had never quite understood why Rakkal liked to claim she was _a troll born pale and tiny_ until now. The elf, by rights, should wear a deathmask of facepaints and the proper earrings of a female who had chosen to fight. Za’tuli could suddenly see it in her mind’s eye like a reflection off the glint of Saeri’s sharp canine - black and white paints, red-browns to highlight the edges, the paint made with the blood of one of her kills. Gold a muted gleam at her ears and throat and arms. It filled her mind with the force of a true vision and Za’tuli had to sink her fingers into the dirt to hold herself still and silent.

Had she been born a Darkspear, Bwonsamdi would have made Saeri a shadowhunter before she had her first bleeding.

She refocused on reality between one inhale and the next, but Saeri’s gaze was oddly level - oddly _knowing_ \- as Za’tuli continued to look at her. It was an odd expression, the rictus-grin below calm, serious eyes, but it gave Za’tuli _hope._ They would be able to do this. They could, together, find and save Rakkal.

Ren’jai dragged herself up to Za’tuli’s left before she could be tempted to say anything. The bones and fangs in her hair clicked quietly and it felt like gunshots to Za’tuli’s ears compared to the utter lack of sound coming from Saeri on her other side. When Taz’rin heaved himself up on Ren’jai’s other side she thought she might have a heart attack from the clack and clatter of his armor.

Saeri huffed the quietest laugh Za’tuli had ever heard and when Za’tuli turned to look at her, panic no doubt etched clearly on her face, the elf merely grinned wider and pointed towards the far end of the demon encampment. Za’tuli looked where directed, feeling her husband’s siblings crowd closer to do the same.

The cave entrance was the only place that could possibly have hid Rakkal from their sight. High, elven pillars stood to either side of the entrance, burnt and cracked but still standing proudly. Za’tuli couldn’t control a low growl as she observed the place.

Her mate still lived, the spirits had told her that clearly. But the life of a demon’s captive was a short one. She would make sure the demons’ lives were even shorter.

She extended a hand, reaching past the smoggy, fel-corrupted air around her and into the spirit realm. She ignored the screaming, writhing tatters that littered the ground and the wailing slave-spirits being drug along behind the inquisitors, instead spreading her power up until she found the felbats gliding above them. They were violent, vicious, alien - and yet not. They were not _children_ of Hir’eek, but they were kin, and so familiar to her.

She felt the bat-loa’s faint fluttering at the edges of her spirit as she began to call to one of the smaller felbats. He chittered at her, amused.

_So you do remember you are mine._

His voice was a high shriek and a soft flutter all at once and she winced, knowing she had tread dangerously close to offending her Loa. But accepting Bwonsamdi had been necessary to survival among the Darkspear, and simple enough with her mother one of his priestesses. But she would not let him intimidate her, not right now. They were both aware of her deals.

_You know I am yours, my loa. And you also know why I do what I do._

The small felbat she was coaxing dipped towards her, then darted straight up in a spiral. It’s mind was filled with the hunger and terror and pain of its existence and she felt her body snarl as she wrapped herself around it, weighing it down with what ropes of contentment, safety, and community she could muster. The warmth of Ren’jai’s furry thigh pressed close to hers helped, and she felt the bat slowly circle down to them as she had planned.

_Be careful of your deal-making, pup. You meddle in the affairs of those older and hungrier than you._ Hir’eek’s presence fluttered against her and suddenly the bat was flying straight at her, entirely bound to her. _But you are right. Save your mate, girl, and remember it was the Lord of the Midnight Skies who aided you, not that musty husk._

Hir’eek left her mind as the felbat came to land on her wrist. She felt all three of her companions startle with the bat’s sudden appearance but did not react to it. She was preoccupied within the bat’s mind - it was tormented and broken by the horrors of it’s short life, memories of pain she could not believe it had survived, even with her binding forcing its mind into complacency.

Her body shuddered as she pressed further into the cracked maze of it, and when next she blinked everything was blurred, a green-tinged greyscale, fogged at the edges. She turned her - the bat’s - head and saw her body’s eyes were shut. She fluttered her wings and only Saeri turned to look at her. The elf’s grin was gone now, replaced with the smirk that Za’tuli was more accustomed to seeing - though it was odd to see it upside down like this.

She nodded at Saeri, and took to the skies.

***

None of the cave’s demons took much note of her as she flitted over their heads, beyond a few troublesome imps taking her flying by as an opportunity to test their - thankfully _poor _\- aim. 

She ducked and weaved around the crumbling remains of elven arches and walls until she reached the back of the cave. The area seemed to be some sort of command center, and she circled the edges before finding a nice place to roost. It was easier to quell her panic while riding the bat’s mind, her emotions more distant. This was the only place they could have hidden Rakkal in the area the spirits had lead her to. She must simply be missing him, somehow.

She stretched her wings to settle in, but before she had even wrapped them around herself properly a succubus separated herself from a circle of demons muttering bitterly in the center of the room and bent double, taking hold of something on the floor. She stood, and yanked a square of dirt up with her. The suddenness startled Za’tuli just as much as it startled the little hoarder-demons scuttling around the edges of the room, and she nearly missed her chance.

It was more instinct than intention that caused her to drop from her perch and dart forward, zipping in under the hidden hatch just before it closed with a bang. The succubus summoned a few lights with a snap of her fingers, lighting the space for herself as Za’tuli found a perch on a rock jutting from the cavern’s roof, concealed in the shadows away from the succubus’ lights. She blinked, adjusting the bat’s poor vision, and what she saw nearly shocked her out of her hold on the bat’s mind. 

Rakkal was hanging from the ceiling in the corner opposite her perch, his wrists bound with heavy, dark, metal shackles. He hung limply from his wrists, chin tucked to chest. Za’tuli thought him unconscious until she saw how tightly his fingers were curled, how measured his chest rose and fell with his breaths, how his toes were pressed just-so into the ground, as much leverage as he could get hanging like that.

Somewhere in the back of her mind Za’tuli felt tears on her cheeks and knew that her hold on the bat’s mind was fading. She strengthened her resolve, ignoring the screaming rush of pain and anger threatening to disconnect her from the bat’s mind. She felt cold to her core as the succubus approached Rakkal, and she screamed in silent agony as the succubus’ whip lashed out faster than her eyes could track. Rakkal made a gut-wrenching noise of pain and lost his footing, twisting in the hold of the shackles. The movement made the light shift over him and she realized the darkness over his skin wasn’t her vision - it was his blood, dried in a coat on his fur and over his skin, drawn from him by Loa-only-knew how many previous whippings.

The succubus demanded answers of him, sometimes harshly, sometimes whispered sweetly, but always the same questions - what the Horde forces knew, where artifacts were, most things that Rakkal didn’t even know. He had made a _point_ of not knowing them, for this very reason. But even those he did know the answers to he only shrugged at or ignored.

She let the pride in her husband’s strength steady her as the whip fell again. And again. And again. And as the whip was put away in favor of the succubus invading his mind. And as that got her just as little information and she resorted to hitting him, demonic strength leaving his hide mottled purple and black. 

It felt like a very long time before the succubus gave up and left through the hatch, giving Za’tuli the opportunity to leave.

***

Her bat-feet shook so terribly she almost couldn’t keep hold of her body’s wrist, but she did it eventually. She looked at her own face and the last thing she saw was the tears flowing from under her lashes before she was opening her own eyes with a sob.

Saeri and Ren’jai pressed close to either side of her, and she could feel Taz’rin’s hand on her back. She steadied her breath with effort, chest clenching as the full impact of seeing her Rakkal like that struck her. Her teeth chattered with it as she described the way in to the others, and she let them press her into lying down properly for a moment and drinking some water.

She shoved them all away before they were ready for her to. Only Saeri looked at her with understanding, and without pity, so she looked the elf in the eye as she spoke.

“It is time to fetch my husband.”

Saeri nodded, and so they started to make their way around the camp towards the cave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't get a chance to edit/post yesterday but I'm catching up so y'all'll hopefully get a double feature tonight.


	10. Day 10: Unconscious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That was the bitch that had whipped her mate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 5!

Ren’jai shrieked in manic laughter as she leapt over Za’tuli’s back, a blur of red and blue and bone and blade. Za’tuli rolled to her feet, hissing as the blow to her side that had knocked her down throbbed - she should have seen that coming. Saeri darted past her, wearing that rictus grin again. Her eyes burnt brighter than Za’tuli had ever seen, bright enough their fel light shone off the dark face of the felguard Saeri leapt at blades-first. Za’tuli watched with some concern as his fel-poison blood sprayed over the elf’s face, darkening her teeth, and she felt a chill go down her spine as Saeri rose from slitting the demon’s throat and licked her teeth and shivered before springing away for the next.

Za’tuli shoved the troubling sight from her mind as the sound of a whiplash whistle-cracked through the air. She had just enough time to spin out of the way before it made contact with her hide, and she hissed as she swung her arm in an arc in the direction it had come from, light trailing her gesture and shooting towards the succubus behind her. The succubus rocked backward from the burning magic and Za’tuli snarled as she recognized the demon from her journey on the bat.

That was the bitch that had whipped her mate.

She charged with a roar, reaching out to the shattered souls littered over the cave floor. They snapped around her like a cold, dark shell, protective and jagged-pointed, and when her body struck that of the succubus the demon’s skin split wherever they touched from a million tiny soul-cuts. The demon wailed under her, and Za’tuli felt the brazen, blatant brush of its attempt at mind control hit her barrier and fall away, torn to shreds by the bone-deep _rage_ Za’tuli filled every spike of it with.

Za’tuli shot one hand out and grabbed the succubus’ horn, shoving her head back by it hard enough she heard the crack of bone against stone. The demon scrabbled at her sides, spreading demonic blood over her robes as her barrier held, continuing to slice into the demon at every contact. Za’tuli stared into its empty, fel-flame eyes as she drew back her right hand.

It took concentration in a place as _dark_ as this to call forth any great amount of light, but she did it. She reached out to the little specks of light left in some of the souls around them, once-holy men and tormented priestesses and more, and they gave their last lights willingly at the brush of her thoughts. The light coalesced around her fingers, growing bright enough it hurt her eyes even in her peripheral vision, and the succubus wailed and writhed and begged in Eredun under her, legs kicking and hips bucking up against hers. Za’tuli rode it out, gathering more light, and more, and then she thrust her hand forward.

She grabbed the succubus by the throat, squeezing as hard as she could, and the ear-splitting scream the demon let out was cut short almost immediately as her grip burnt its flesh to cinders and then broke _through,_ crumbling the demon’s neck like so much dry dirt. Za’tuli watched, grinning, as the flame burnt out in the succubus’ eyes and her right fist closed around its spine. The remaining light she had gathered burst out from her as she jerked her arm back, keeping her left hand on the demon’s horn and holding onto the length of smoldering bones as flakes of burnt demon-flesh fell around her and the light faded.

She panted as she let the shield around her go, thanking the spirits as they passed, exhausted, to the Other Side. The effort of holding the barrier hit her like a kodo to the chest and her legs trembled as she got to her feet. Thankfully, no one needed her assistance - Taz’rin was bashing an imp repeatedly between his shield and the wall, likely more out of annoyance than anything else, and Saeri was cleaning her blades on a bit of the felguard’s tabard while giving Ren’jai tips as she gleefully pried a couple of rib bones out of the wounds in its chest.

It was quiet in the cavern now that they’d cleared it out - not even a groan of pain or fear reached Za’tuli’s ears. Good. She looked around and realized they’d made it all the way to the back of the cave, the same cavern the trap door had been hidden.

She thrust the fatigue from her mind, bursting into motion. It was dizzying trying to remember the layout of the room, her memories upside-down and blurry, but after a moment of confusion she felt the edges of the hatch. She didn’t bother with finding whatever the succubus had pulled it open with, instead wedging her fingers under it, scrabbling, and beginning to shove it open. Taz’rin slid to his knees in the sand beside her and took the weight, Ren’jai joining him on his other side. The second it was open far enough Za’tuli slithered down it.

She rolled to take the impact and came to a stop on her feet, facing her mate.

The loud slam of the trap door being thrown wide and the softer thumps of her companions dropping down after her barely registered. Rakkal was _battered _\- bruised and bloody and littered with still-healing cuts and splits in his skin. Something about the line of his ribs was subtly _wrong,_ and she could tell from how his jaw hung that it wasn’t seated properly. His arms were discolored, still above his head, and seemed slightly-too-long with how he hung from them. The air reeked, rancid from days of Rakkal’s own blood and waste combined with polluting fel magics.

Taz’rin gagged when he took his first full breath, and Ren’jai choked and coughed. Saeri stepped up to Za’tuli’s elbow, her eyes critical of the state Rakkal was in.

“He’s not dead,” Saeri muttered, and Za’tuli clung to her forthrightness like a lifeline.

“No,” she agreed. “Just -” she choked briefly on the fetid air. “Just unconscious. I am… unsure which should be done first, heal him or move him.”

Saeri opened her mouth as if to speak but was cut off by a bellow from outside. Her lip curled, and Za’tuli could _see _her mind change. “We’ll have to move him. Fucking place is going to be crawling soon, and we can’t fight off an army while carrying him.” She turned her head, rather than moving in any way away from Za’tuli or Rakkal. “Taz,” she bit out, and Za’tuli envied Saeri her command over her emotions as her own head spun, eyes darting from wound to wound. “Hold his weight. Ren, boost me up so I can reach the locks.”

Rakkal was laid out in his brother’s arms within seconds, free of the shackles, shoulders definitely at an awkward angle. Saeri was careful as she folded them over his chest but he still stirred, breath hitching. He didn’t wake from the pain, which worried Za’tuli more than screaming would have, though it served their purposes for the moment.

She gathered herself and waved Taz’rin over to the opening in the cave, using most of her remaining energy to levitate him out of the hatch. Ren’jai gave her a step up, shoving her through the hatch, then practically threw Saeri up to meet her before jumping up, catching the edge, and hauling herself onto the cave floor.

The noises of approaching demons were faint, but steadily increasing. “We must go _now,”_ Za’tuli ordered. They moved as one, Taz’rin taking up the rear for once. They ducked out of the cave and behind one of the massive pillars just before the first demon crested the ridge around the camp.

The demons made a direct line into the cave and Saeri’s gesture to keep moving was redundant as they all bolted towards where they had entered the demon encampment. Za’tuli heard a soft shriek and looked up as she ran, catching sight of the small felbat she had taken hold of earlier flying over their heads.

She felt the soft flutter of leathery wings brush over her mind and felt her loa’s smug pride, urging her on as she ran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woooo! No more captivity! Also I came rly close to killing that felbat so if you like the felbat you can thank Valisandre she chose to let it live (and have Za'tuli witness the entire thing, instead of it being cut short).


	11. Day 11: Stitches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hir'eek! Grant me wings of your power!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 6! Why yes this story line IS still going.

Za’tuli licked her lips, tasting the drying sweat that had gathered on her skin as they had made a break for safety. They had barely skidded into an empty cave before she had ordered Taz’rin to lower Rakkal to the ground and let her see his injuries. They were severe - dislocations, broken bones, deep bruises, cuts, he was a patchwork quilt of pain - but not life-threatening.

Not for a troll, anyways. She had to grit her teeth to maintain her focus on the needle in her hand just _thinking_ about the state he would be in if he were any of the other races she had healed on this Loa-forsaken _pit._ She steadied the faint tremor in her hand and blocked out the sounds of Saeri ordering the others around to defend the cave. She would need to focus to help her husband live.

She brought the needle to his flesh. The thin line of silk thread seemed unsuited to the task of holding his hide together while he healed, but she shook off the habitual distrust. She had seen what this strange, elven silk could do, and it was better by far than her old gut-thread. She ignored Rakkal’s pained twitch as she used her left hand to press the edges of the deepest lash together, sliding her needle quickly and efficiently through his skin and through the other side.

The cut was annoyingly angled over the curves of his ribs and chest, forcing her to twist at uncomfortable angles to stitch it neatly. Normally, she would straddle him to ease the angle, but _normally_ he did not also have at least two cracked ribs and bleeding under the skin of his other side. She sewed neatly but quickly, stitches nowhere near as tightly placed as she would on any other species. Her mate was hardy, his regeneration proven - all that she had to do was make sure the edges of the wound didn’t expand as he breathed and could heal cleanly. It would make it easier for him to regenerate, and mean less work for her as she healed him.

They would both need as much help as they could get.

She finished her work on the first cut and moved to the next, and the next, and the next. Half a dozen cuts worthy of her attention in total, and her fingers were sticky-slick and stained red by the time she finished. Rakkal’s body juddered and jerked under her attentions but still he didn’t wake, and she tamped down of the concern building in her gut. Normally she had to give him a heavy dose of alcohol or sedative to get him to sit still, or even sleep through, stitching wounds shut without jumping away like a scalded cat.

Za’tuli blinked as she realized there was nothing else to stitch. All of the other cuts would heal evenly on their own, none of them more than a knuckle-deep. She took a steadying breath, centering herself, resting back on her heels with her bloody hands resting flat on her knees. She hesitated a moment, unsure of which loa might assist her in this, here in this unholy mire, before deciding that she would simply have to contact the only one who had spoken up at all recently.

Hir’eek felt far away and uninterested as she began to pray, ritual words tumbling easily from her lips. The Zandali was comforting, a wisp of home in the middle of hell, and it brought strength to her voice as she began to chant in earnest. She begged in steady rhythm, imagining the rolling beat of the ritual drums to guide her, opening herself to his presence, phrasing her request carefully. She raised her hands slowly, lifting them until they were level with her face, and once the soft skin along the insides of her forearms was level with her tusks she pressed them close and jerked her head, tearing two twin lines of red into her green hide. Her blood flowed easily but lightly as she extended her arms above and beside her, letting the rhythm of her prayers to the bat-god move her body to the beat.

_Hir’eek! Lord of the Midnight Skies! Grant me wings of your power! I beg you for the comfort of the night to heal and soothe! Guide my lost hands in my healing!_

She could feel the moment he caught the scent of her blood and the taste of her power reaching out to him, just as one could feel the gaze of a tiger stalking them in the jungle. She pressed towards it, awareness of the cave around her fading, offering to him.

She could feel his interest as she repeated her prayers and then - the brush of wing-leather over her shoulders, the scent of musky fur, the ridged press of his nose against first one arm and then the other. He shrieked loudly, clear and high, accepting her tribute, and all trace of fear for Rakkal left her. They would guide him to health together.

She tilted forward, her arms over Rakkal’s supine form, and felt each drop of her blood as it landed on him. She was completely blind, nothing but darkness, but she knew only security and confidence as she felt the long, clawed fingers of Hir’eek’s hand close around her waist. He held her steady as her hands moved over Rakkal’s body, his power warm like blood over her, through her, smoothing away the minor wounds scattered over her husband’s body. She could smell the blood of the deep bruising as she mended the tears in his organs and flesh that caused it, taste the marrow of his ribs as she snapped and pressed them into place, hear the rush of his blood returning to his fingers as she-and-Hir’eek _pressed_ his shoulders back into position with a gut-churning _thud._

She could feel more to do, still, when Hir’eek wrapped his hand more firmly around her, pulling her back gently. She struggled a moment, holding on long enough to brush away the crack in her mate’s skull before acquiescing to Hir’eek’s silent command. He shrieked in laughter in the back of her mind, long tongue lapping over her wrists. She could feel his satisfaction in the meal as her wrists closed and she sighed in contentment.

_Always making deals, always out for just a little bit more, to go a little further, _he muttered, fond. She turned to nuzzle into the fur over his chest, the feeling fading as her connection to the spirit realm faded.

_You will guide me home,_ she responded, and he clicked at her approvingly before fading away.

Her sight returned in a rush, and the first thing she saw was the little felbat from earlier. It hung upside down from her finger, and she smiled at the sight of small drips of her blood over its fur. She had fed two bats with her offering, then. She wondered if the little one had asked Hir’eek’s permission, first.

She landed on her back with a thud, sending her little friend flying away for a more stable perch. Saeri’s concerned face appeared over her, eyes shining brightly in the shadow of her hanging hair. Za’tuli lifted her left hand from the ground to give a weak wave. “I am fine, as is my idiot,” she mumbled, and Saeri smirked at her and nodded approvingly.

“Never without a cost, right?” she asked, and Za’tuli nodded back at her, grateful for her understanding.

“Do not bother moving us, we are fine as we are. Wake me if we need to move.”

She half-registered Saeri moving her legs so they weren’t folded awkwardly under her before sleep claimed her, filled with calm darkness and soft wings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah idk how "stitches" brought out so much loa stuff either but just roll with it for me. There's some stitches in there.


	12. Day 12: Don't Move

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rakkal blinked awake in stages.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last bit! Finally

Rakkal blinked awake in stages.

The first time he blinked it was horrifically bright, sending shooting pain to seemingly random corners of his head. He squeezed his eyes shut tight, and all he could feel of his body was a dull throbbing and stinging jolts as he breathed. He sank back into darkness gratefully.

The second time he remembered, vaguely, where he had been before. His whole body jerked with the memory and his - failed - attempt to sit up. He heard a voice that sounded distractingly familiar let out a string of violent curses in Zandali and the cot he seemed to be sprawled over moved alarmingly. He flailed as the cot continued to move, and only realized he was being _held_ when one of his hands grabbed onto an ear. More cursing filled the air and made his head hurt. He tried to stay awake, desperate to make sense of it, and failed at both things.

The third time he pried his eyes open he felt better until he saw Za’tuli’s face. It was her _angry _face, and before he could jar his foggy brain into remembering anything else he was wondering at what he could have possibly done to have her give him That Look. Their eyes met and her lip curled up in a snarl.

“Do not move this time.”

He nodded and it made the pain in his head burst through the soothing, numbing buzz of her magic - she was healing him, or at least dulling the pain of an injury. He must have been hurt. He heard himself whine in discomfort as he tried to remember, and Za’tuli scoffed at him.

“Find, then. Back to sleep with you.”

When he finally woke up properly, he was back in their tent in Legionfall and he was being smothered by his brother’s arm over his face. He slapped at it frantically, succeeding in getting it off his nose and mouth after a brief struggle. He couldn’t move his legs, which worried him before he looked down and saw his sister’s blood red mop of hair and it’s accompanying riot of braided-in trinkets. She was sprawled over his legs on her back, mouth open wide, snoring, her tusks jutting dangerously close to Taz’rin’s leg.

Rakkal twisted his head to the side to see the brute himself snorting awake, frowning back at him. “You’re not supposed to be awake yet.”

Rakkal agreed with him - his body felt like it had been run over by a kodo or six. His first attempt to respond was stopped by the dryness of his throat and ended in nothing more than a cry crackling noise and a cough, but he felt better after Taz’rin stretched out one unfairly long arm and pulled a waterskin over from the table for him. “I don’t think I was supposed to be smothered by an elbow, either.”

Taz’rin grinned at him around his massive tusks, lifting an arm threateningly. “Would you prefer an armpit?”

Rakkal took another sip from the waterskin before hitting him with it. Taz’rin’s squawk woke Ren’jai, and she didn’t even bother joining in properly, instead using both hands to shove Taz’rin off the bed ass-first. Rakkal cackled, eyes watering from the pain it caused in his head, until his wife swept into the tent with a bucket of water, a cloth sack, and a weary expression.

“I gave you simple instructions,” she started and Ren’jair and Taz’rin were on their feet and dodging around her before she could finish, both claiming a sudden need to eat. Rakkal grinned at her when she shook her head at all three of them.

“You healed everything but my headache,” he informed her, and she snorted at him.

“No, but the headache is the only thing bad enough for you to feel, now.” Her expression turned serious. “That demon did a number on you.”

He nodded, careful of how the movement added to the pain in his skull. “She wanted -”

“I know what it wanted,” she cut over him. He frowned at her, but before he could ask she gestured upwards. He looked up and caught sight of a small felbat. It brought back one of the last clear memories he had of his captivity before the pain and mind-charms blurred too badly to be separated - flashes of green in the darkness, something he’d thought must have been his mind playing tricks or another demon watching. He frowned at her, not understanding, and she sighed. “Hir’eek allowed me to use one of his kin to find you. I could only leave once she opened the door again.”

Rakkal didn’t bother speaking, he simply waved a hand to beckon her closer and tugged her down to join him once she was within reach. She set her bucket and sack down and curled into him without bothering to protest. He stroked her braids as she muttered about how he wasn’t ever allowed to do anything like that ever again, and how Hir’eek had laughed at him, and, finally, how worried she had been. 

He wasn’t sure when he fell asleep again, but it was clean this time, healing for both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It didn't fit in his POV, but basically fel magic takes a lot to heal from. Za'tuli could heal/mostly heal a lot of stuff, and her magic cleansed him a bit, but it still hurt like a bitch. Plus she could heal the skull fracture but she couldn't really get the blood/swelling out at the end there, she and Hir'eek were took drained (and bruising, even brain bruising, is relatively minor given troll healing). Basically, she did triage-healing and there's lingering other stuff she's still too wiped out to heal, bc all of Rakkal's little wake-ups and their travel only take, like, a few hours tbh. It's a tiny island. Yes, I DO have to figure out every injury and where it is and what happens to it before I write about it, why do you think I'm constantly late posting this stuff?
> 
> Also: YAY HE'S NOT BEING TORTURED OR HALF DEAD ANYMORE! (for now)


	13. Day 13: Adrenaline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He leapt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we go way back in time to vanilla era, during that year Rakkal was away from Sen'jin. No beta we write and post while everyone is sleeping like men.

Rakkal eased carefully further out onto the branch, purple-grey bark rough under his feet. His feet curved easily around it, holding him steady as he moved closer, closer, lining himself up perfectly with his prey. She was typical of her race - purple skin, tall, snowy hair, long ears, glowing eyes, bow at the ready. He was silent as he moved into position, not a single sound. Silent, and sure, and invisible. Nothing he did could have ever drawn her attention before he struck.

But the leaf that fell from above him still glided through the air just in front of his face, slow and lazy but not slow or lazy _enough_, and his heart stuttered to a stop as it ghosted over her cheek.

She looked up, pure reaction to the delicate touch of the leaf’s edge against her skin, and he felt the moment their eyes locked like a fist to his gut. His blood rushed in his ears as time stretched out, a moment lasting a lifetime. Her eyes widened, silver pools widening like tiny moons growing full. His feet wrapped tighter around the branch, every catch of the bark against his soles feeling like the strike of a switch. He could feel his arms lifting to balance him and every muscle in his body coiled for the leap as if they were happening without him, separate from him, perhaps ordered by the same force raising the elf’s bow to fire.

He leapt. He fell. She fired.

The arrow glanced off his tusk and skidded shallowly over his cheekbone. He twisted his head in reaction and it upset the turn of his body just enough, just _barely_ enough, that the elf’s spin to the side took her out of his reach. He collapsed into a roll as he impacted with the ground, spending the momentum and directing it with a sharp kick against the earth. He twisted up onto his feet, toes digging into the earth, and he was already running by the time she had another arrow notched.

He measured times in blinks and movements as he dodged again, and again, and a third time, closing the distance faster and faster as she leapt backwards and sidestepped him, uncountable arrows missing entirely or just barely scratching his fur. He bared his teeth as she moved just a breath too slowly, adrenaline kicking him in the chest as he crouched, coiled like a snake, before he sprang up and forwards. His daggers flashed steel-cold and _bright_ in the evening glow, as bright and silver as her wide, terrified eyes, as he brought his arms up mid-motion and then stabbed downwards with both weapons.

The elf cried out in pain and fell under him. He drew a breath, open-mouthed, catching every speck of light in the gloom with his wide-wide eyes as he looked down at her. He could taste both of their blood on the air, and he felt a satisfied shudder roll down his spine, secondary to the pounding in his chest. He couldn’t move, limbs locked, his legs bunched under him in a crouch, feet braced on the elf’s thighs, daggers hilt-deep in her chest. He jolted as he saw her chest move - one hitch, two. He looked into her eyes and saw the light still there, the fury still in the set of her mouth. Her lips were moving, sticking to her bloody fangs, and he licked at his own teeth in response. Her hand spasmed to the side of them but she lacked the strength to lift the shortsword she had drawn and intended to gut him with.

His whole body _lurched_ as it registered, realization like like raindrops hitting the sand, just how close she had come to winning. She had guessed his move, even prepared for it in those brief seconds before he had struck, and if he had moved even the slightest bit slower his belly would be split open around her sword right now. But he hadn’t been slower. He had been faster, more lethal. _He_ had won.

He leaned in close to her face as more blood bubbled up from behind her teeth, finding it difficult to hold himself up as his arms and legs shook violently. She glared at him through the pain, hissing at him, sending tiny splatters of her blood up into his face. He didn’t flinch from it, just breathed the metal tang deep into his lungs as her eyes faded, then flickered, then went out completely.

He stood, yanking his blades from her chest, and realized he was panting. His entire body shook, core-deep, and it felt like something had _come loose_ inside his gut. It rattled in him like a snake’s tail, the vibrations of it moving through him until his teeth chattered. His throat fluttered around his breaths he shook so badly, and he fell backwards onto his ass as he finally lost the fight against gravity. He kept hold of his daggers only by virtue of his hands cramping too firmly around the hilts.

He shook, occasional twitches moving through his shoulders, his legs, his neck. He sat there, and he stared at the corpse of the night elf, the huntress he had chosen to hunt, and then he _laughed._ It started quiet and hitched and grew strong, and loud, and he didn’t care about the danger it brought him as he threw back his head, tears in his eyes, and he laughed from his belly. His head swam a little as the frantic energy in his muscles died out slowly until all that was left was a bone-deep exhaustion.

Rakkal rolled his head forward until he could see the now-cold corpse and he grinned, chuckling again. His pulse still pounded in his ears but it had lessened to the healthy racing of victory. He had done it. His first real kill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had absolutely 0 inspiration for this until 5:30am out of nowhere it punched me in the face with listening to Teeth by 5sos. Idek.
> 
> To specify - this is the first time he kills a PERSON. It's a big deal for all warriors of the tribe, but especially a wanna-be assassin/shadowhunter. He's also a baby here! It's so nice writing these guys young, honestly. He's like, uh, 15 or 16 here, roughly. It was also fun writing out a description of a heavy adrenaline rush that purposefully matches my own personal reaction to it.


	14. Day 14: Tear-Stained

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It felt like everything in their hut was tear-stained.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More vanilla era! Around the time they're first married.

It felt like everything in their hut was tear-stained, soaked through with their sadness. Za’tuli lay on her side in their bed and wondered, as the scent of blood and the sound of Rakkal’s sobbing outside made the edges of everything bright-and-red-and-fuzzy, how long all of this would be _theirs._ Her mate was Darkspear. _Small and isolated_, her mother had told her, years-and-fears ago, when they had first set sail to the tiny islands to try and make contact for the Zandalari through their joint worship of Bwonsamdi. _They have yet to shed certain… limitations. Stay close to me, and be careful._

She had stayed close to her mother. She had been careful. She had kept curious, wandering hands at bay and closed her ears to disgusting commentary from older males looking for a curiosity to add to their pitiful harems. She had waited for and eventually chosen her mate, her perfect mate, her match.

She was still, somehow, failing.

The healer brought a cup full of something herbal-smelling to her face and she twisted her neck to shove her face into the furs to avoid it. The healer would have none of it, her hand closing in Za’tuli’s hair and dragging her head up. Za’tuli gagged as the potion hit her tongue, but swallowed as it was poured into her mouth, a fresh wave of tears running down her face. A healing potion - she could taste the peacebloom. It made her sob, once, before the jagged edges inside her head smoothed out again and she laid back down, the healer’s hand no longer holding her up. A healing potion would do nothing for the baby her body had cast out, abandoned bloody and barely-formed to the hot, dry air of Durotar.

Her thoughts went jagged again and she couldn’t think, couldn’t _breathe,_ lungs stabbed by the sharp pain of everything that shot through her head. She was Zandalari, an outsider, and she had failed in the one thing that the Darkspear _expected_ their women to do. Was it because they were too different, after all? Would she never be able to -

She rolled over the edge of the bed and vomited into the bucket the healer had placed there for soiled rags, a combination of her path of thought and the continued cramping in her gut. The healer made a concerned noise and ran her thumb over Za’tuli’s forehead, feeling for a spike in temperature. Za’tuli looked up at her, breath hitching, uncaring of the mess dripping from her chin or the stench in the air, and wished she could stop crying. The healer’s cheeks were wet, too, which surprised her. Why would a proper Darkspear woman, who Za’tuli knew had given her mate many healthy children, care so much about her failure?

Her gut twisted as the healer wiped her face clean with a soft rag, muttering something she couldn’t understand through the ringing in her ears. Perhaps it was pity. Perhaps the healer knew something she did not. She had heard of a few women being cast out by their husbands after failing to get pregnant at all - would it be worse for a woman who had dared to give her mate _hope_ before she failed? Her hands fisted in the furs through another wave of cramps, less painful than the last but still uncomfortable, secondary now to the terror beating through her chest.

She couldn’t lose Rakkal. But perhaps she already had.

The healer made a low, considering noise, and Za’tuli curled into a ball to get away from it. She vaguely registered one set of footfalls moving further away, and then heavier ones coming closer. All she could see in the darkness behind her eyelids and folded arms was Rakkal’s panicked, grief-stricken face as he had seen the blood.

Something hit the ground hard beside her and she flinched, looking up before she could think better of it. She froze, Rakkal’s wide, wet, silver eyes only inches from her. He was kneeling beside the bed, the bucket that had been there removed when she hadn’t cared to notice. His hands came up to cup her face and she flinch, a shaking starting in her gut, just where the cramps had been.

His face contorted and he drew his hands back as if _burned._ His sides and shoulders heaved unevenly as he panted, fresh tears running over the tracks stained into his skin and the short, light, barely-there fur on his face. His mouth hung open, lips trembling like his words were fighting to break through, and Za’tuli let her head drop even as she did her best to sit up as well as she could, all her weight braced on her arms. She could not bear to look at him as he dismissed her, but she _would_ not lie there in a heap as he did it. She would have stood, if she could.

A gentle thumb brushing over her cheek surprised her. She twitched, but didn’t look up. Rakkal’s breathing was ragged and she could hear his throat click each time he swallowed before finally speaking.

“I’m so sorry.”

She jerked her head up so quickly her neck ached. His hand fell from her cheek at the movement and he just _watched_ her, sadness etched over his face and filling his eyes. She opened her mouth to say _something,_ anything, but he shook his head before she could.

“I’m sorry, Za’tuli, I’m so sorry. I should have - I don’t know. The healer thinks you might have overworked yourself, or maybe something hit… I should have taken better care of you. I should’ve been here more, or -”

She slapped one hand over his mouth. The motion almost sent them both tumbling over, and his tusk grazed her palm, but she was too confused to listen to more. He had to _stop._

“Why are _you_ sorry?” she whispered, and his brow furrowed up so hard it looked painful, his eyes filling with fresh tears. She dropped her gaze from his eyes to his mouth, her green skin over his blue-grey. She shook her head at him. “Nothing hit me. I was doing nothing more taxing than walking outside for a breeze when - when I -”

A shudder ran over her skin and then his hands were on her again, soft fur a comfort she couldn’t pull away from as his arms wrapped around her and pulled her to his chest. He was sun-warm and smelled of salt and she buried her face in his neck, sobs breaking free of where she had locked them in tight.

“_I_ am sorry,” she whispered, and he squeezed her tighter.

“Don’t you _dare,”_ he muttered, rocking them both a little. He felt his tears wetting her hair and she felt it was only fair, as she was soaking his bare chest. She held onto him as they both cried, her thoughts a jumble. She wasn’t sure how long it was before he spoke again, quiet and muffled some by her hair.

“If it wasn’t that, then does the healer know what happened? Is there something I can - that we can do?”

Za’tuli shrugged against him. “I do not remember the healer saying anything. I…I might not be able to… I don’t know.” She sniffled a fresh wave of hurt breaking over her in a wave, more violent than it had any right to be. The baby hadn’t been there for very long. Rakkal was right here, he hadn’t pushed her aside. But. She held onto him tighter, not wanting to see his face when she asked. “Why did you go outside?” she asked, barely any sound to it. He shifted, trying to pull back to see her face, but she wouldn’t let him.

“The… the healer told me to. She said I… shouldn’t see.” He swallowed, throat bobbing against her forehead. “Taz’rin and Zulk had to hold me back when you… when you screamed.”

She pressed as tightly as she could to him, nails scrabbling against his hide. SHe wished he didn’t shave his head for a moment, just so she could make fists in it and hold him even _tighter._ “You did not - you are not -” she growled at herself, forcing herself to speak. “I have seen Darkspear leave women who cannot give them -”

He pried her off of him despite her best efforts, holding her by the upper arms to keep her from hiding in his neck again. He was shaking her, just a little, and she didn’t think he meant to do it but she still had to brace herself by grabbing onto his forearms. _“Why would you think that I -”_ he cut his yelling off with a strangled sound when she squeezed her eyes shut. She could hear him panting through his nose before he growled, low and angry, and started again. “You could deny me even the _attempt_ at children, you could cut my balls off with a fucking rusty knife to make _sure_ of it, and I wouldn’t _leave_ you.”

She blinked, looking up at his face against and wincing automatically at the confused rage there. She swallowed. “I… it is just what I have seen.”

His entire face twitched, twice, and then he shut his eyes with a sigh. He hung his head, grip loosening around her arms. She leaned back, exhaustion seeping up from her core, but held onto his arm as she laid down so he was forced to follow her or bend double over the bed. He snorted and crawled in beside her. She had meant to speak to him more, but the pain, and the grief, and over it all the relief that she wouldn’t be losing him, as well, washed over her and won the battle exhaustion by itself couldn’t. She slept.

***

When she woke, Rakkal was out cold on his back, sprawled out to shed heat, and the only light coming through the curtain of their hut was that of the moon. She flexed her toes and stretched, testing, and found she had healed as much as she was going to. The healer’s cleaning and the evening breeze had left no lingering scent of blood. Her heart clenched as she realized that their memories of it were all that was left of her child. Her mother would have dealt with the remains, by now.

She rolled out of bed, careful not to wake Rakkal. The sadness lapped at her mind but wasn’t, after some rest, quite so all-encompassing. In its place was a rock-hard core of determination.

This would not happen again.

She stepped out onto the sand, bare but for her jewelry and loincloth, ignoring the night guards’ mildly questioning looks as she passed them. They were used to her moving about at night - a burden of following a loa of the night. She made her way out along the shore, quieter now with the majority of the crabs and makrura sleeping, until she reached the tree she had first gotten close to Rakkal under. It was a little larger, now, though not by much, and she knew Rakkal still used it as a perch. She considered climbing up to sprawl out along one of the trunks as he did before dismissing the idea. She was still weak, her balance slightly off.

Instead she turned her back to the tree and knelt. She had had a vague idea spinning through her head as she walked, but as she settled here she knew that it would not work unless she altered it. She rested her hands on her knees and then raised them as she drew in a deep breath, just as she had seen her mother do so many times. It felt natural, but not _right,_ as she called out to Bwonsamdi.

The prayers were her mother’s, well-worn and old, simple and beseeching. _Bwonsamdi, loa of graves. Bwonsamdi, guardian of souls. _Her breath hitched as cold fingers danced over her mind, like a curious child tickling under a raptor’s chin. _Bwonsamdi, your child must speak to you. Bwonsamdi, where are you?_

_Hello, hello, little thing!_

She jerked as his voice rang out, much louder than Hir’eek’s ever did. It was deep, booming, echoed by a creaking rattle that reminded her of bone striking bone. It startled her enough that she couldn’t think of an answer before he spoke again.

_Well go ahead, child. Tell me why you came to visit lonely, old Bwonsamdi. _He paused, and she could feel him brushing against her mind, testing her power without pressing too hard. _Don’t you belong to the bat, girl?_

She clenched her jaw, settling herself. Her mother never _begged_ Bwonsamdi, she _argued_ with him. She would do no less. _I belong to no one but myself, Bwonsamdi. But Hir’eek is my loa, yes._

His laughter rumbled out again, rattling her teeth in the bone of her jaws. Or perhaps the bone of her jaws around her teeth. His tone twisted, growing coy and cajoling. Not overly hostile, but it set her hackles up. _You came to make a deal, eh? Poor, poor little thing. What ya need from ol’ Bwonsamdi that you can’t get from your bat? _She could feel him curling around her shoulders like a snake, his breath cold in her ear. _And what are you gonna **give** to get it?_

Za’tuli tsk’d at him, feigning irritation. _You are as over-eager as my mother says. I had thought the loa of graves would have the patience of one._

He drew back from her, and suddenly her mind was a thousand times clearer. He chortled at her as she spun her thoughts together into a cohesive request. _Oh you ARE your ma’da’s girl, aren’t you? Good, good. I can’t **stand **a boring priestess._

She bared her teeth, as much a threat as a grin - just like his own grin was, floating in her mind’s eye. _I do have a deal for you, Bwonsamdi. But I do not take kindly to being pressured and played with. Meddle in my mind again and the deal will not be offered._

_Ohoho, little priestess. _He swooped in close again, but did not touch her in any fashion. _You bargain dangerously. But! Go ahead. Death’s been boring, nowadays, and this deal you think I’ll beg for might be funny._

She let herself fall back into the inviting dark in the back of her mind, eyes tightly shut, and then she was standing before Bwonsamdi, blue flames floating in the nothing around them. She refused to gawk at his showboating, instead meeting his gaze evenly. _I lost a child today._

He nodded at her, a flicker of empathy echoing between them. _I know._ He raised a brow. _Your ma’da already made sure it was nice and comfy on the other side. What do you want with it? I don’t recommend asking for it back._

She shook her head before he had finished speaking. _No. You will keep it safe. But I intend to have more - many more. I will not have what happened today repeat itself._

He scoffed at her. _I’m the loa of death, girl, not childbirth. What would I -_

_You are the loa of death, yes,_ she interrupted him, and she felt the petty anger in response bubble around them. She ignored it. _But you are also powerful. It is power I require. Power supporting me as they grow within me, power assisting me in shielding them from death until they can fight for themselves. _His disbelief set her teeth on edge and she hurried on. _There is war brewing, Bwonsamdi. It has already begun, in some corners. My children will be fierce, strong - they will be warriors of the tribe, and they will end many lives. If you assist me, those souls they take from others **could **belong to **you.**_

Bwonsami’s face froze, eyes locked on hers as he hovered. She felt nothing from him, and then worse than nothing, a cold burn spreading between them like an expanding pool of lava. The pain grew, becoming almost intolerable, but she held. She weathered it as he measured her, feeling tears freeze down her cheeks.

Finally, he spoke. _You will serve me if I do this, not the bat._

She sneered at him. _No._ Fury thundered around her, bolts of blue flame, of pure, raw, dark power. She held still. Once the fit had passed, she continued. _I will follow my loa. My children may choose to devote themselves to their own loa. But I will teach them how to send the souls of their enemies to you to fuel your fires. You will not get **us**, Bwonsamdi, not until it is our time to join you or they choose you of their own free will. But you **will** get **thousands** of others._

She thought he might dismiss it out of hand, in the seconds that followed. Or, if she had truly offended him, he might kill her outright. But the silence simply stretched out, gentling from tension to consideration.

And then all at once, he moved.

His half-skeletal form was suddenly directly in front of her, and before she could react hand hand slapped out to cover her belly, the bones of his fingers pinching at her hide. She gasped as icy blue-black fire spread over her skin and then sunk _into _her, burning and freezing her from the inside out until her very bones felt charred and iced over.

And then it was done, and Bwonsamdi was floating gently back from her. _I accept your deal, clever child,_ he announced, chuckling. _Give your ma’da my best._

She opened her eyes with a gasp, a felt lined of ice crack over her cheeks. She panted for air, trying to reorient herself, and trembled as the cold surrounding her gave way to the warmth of the rising sun. She heard quick footsteps approaching over the sand and turned to face them, finding Rakkal jogging over the sands.

He skidded to a stop beside her, panting almost as heavily as she was. “I woke up and you - I had to ask -” He paused for a moment to bend double and catch his breath. He sighed, collapsing bonelessly beside her, giving up on explanations in favor of getting to the root of it. _“Why?_ What was so important that you couldn’t pray about in our hut?”

She felt a little guilty, then, but she knew that if he had woken up, he would have tried to stop her. She had taken too large a risk, and he was too careful a soul to stomach it. 

“I… had to make a deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to be clear bc this is half-canon and half-head canon: Loa are jealous creatures. Except for Gonk, they prefer (strongly) not to share. However it isn't IMPOSSIBLE to share. And Hir'eek is quite weak in vanilla-era, so he really can't do something like this. Hir'eek understands but does not LIKE her deal. He and Rakkal agree on some things, at least.
> 
> (Rakkal warms up to the deal after a few healthy babies because he is High Key Dad).
> 
> Comments appreciated! <3


	15. Day 15: Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is it easier to put behind you when you when you can see the wound heal and scar?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More vanilla era! I love vanilla era.

They healed too quickly for scars to form, usually. Most times, Za’tuli was pleased by this; it was a visible marker that they were both - that they were _all -_ still healthy and alive no matter what had been done to them. It was also often a mark of pride, that even those worst of injuries had been smoothed away by her power.

But tonight she sat with her back to the healing hut’s central pole, Rakkal’s head in her lap, his siblings curled around them, and she could not sleep. She could not sleep, mind restless as she traced gentle fingers over Rakkal’s neck and shoulder, because all she could think of was what he had looked like after he had come back from his last journey. Three months he had been gone. Nearly as long as the stretch of time they had lived together, properly mated, before he’d left. He had come back bleeding, wounds struggling to close, thorns dug so deep into his hide she’d had to cut down to get them, the tip of a quilboar’s tusk lodged in his back.

But he _had_ come back.

She ran her fingers over his neck again, remembering how the skin had kept splitting, just there, whenever he had jerked in pain as she got the tusk out. His skin had kept trying to heal itself, and then his muscles had split it right open again. And again and again and again, until she had gotten the tusk out and pinned him in place with her thighs so she could flush and salve and bandage the wound on his neck properly.

Her fingers jerked against his skin and he twitched in his sleep. She froze, worried she had woken him up, but he only brought his knees up to curl around her tighter. She sighed at him, rubbing a thumb over the barely-there, blood-red stubble growing back in along his scalp.

Soft footfalls sounded at the hut’s entrance and she watched, curious, as the she-elf her mate’s family was so fond of slunk in the doorway. The bead curtain barely moved as she passed through it, and Za’tuli could swear her outline flickered and faded at the edges, moonlight seeping through. But when she blinked the elf was solid, if still eerily quiet as she stepped daintily over the sprawled limbs of the trolls around them. Even little Zulk had decided to stay, and the elf smiled as she stepped between his spindly, outstretched arms.

She stopped in front of Za’tuli and then crouched, knees barely avoiding coming into contact with Rakkal’s curved back. She sighed, and Za’tuli had the distinct impression that she had been _allowed_ to hear the sound.

“I just want you to know that I taught him better than to start shit in the middle of a quilboar camp,” Saeri whispered, and Za’tuli huffed, torn between being offended on her mate’s behalf and honest amusement. She ran her fingers along their now-familiar track over Rakkal’s neck again, and Saeri’s softly glowing eyes followed the movement. She sighed again. “It won’t get easier. But he _will _get better, if he lives, and you’ll have fewer instances of… this.”

“Or he will not live,” Za’tuli responded, barely more than a breath. Her hand shook.

Saeri nodded. “Or that, yeah.” She gave a lopsided smile, still watching the movements of Za’tuli’s fingers. “I doubt it, though. He’s a sneaky son of a bitch. He’s quick and he’s quiet. He just needs to learn when to strike, and that’s just practice.” Finally, she looked up to meet Za’tuli’s eyes, and her smile grew even more lopsided and showed an alarming amount of teeth for one so small. “Plus, I’m giving him tips.”

Za’tuli snorted, and promptly froze as the sound - or perhaps the movement of her belly - made Rakkal grumble and shove his face further into her skin. She winced as his sharp tusks nicked her hide, stinging but not drawing blood. She gently eased him back a little, ignoring Saeri’s quiet laughter. They sat there a moment, before Za’tuli saw Saeri tense to leave.

“You may stay,” slipped out before she could consider it, but she found she meant it. “You are family to my family, for reasons I respect more than you know.” Saeri just watched her, not even moving with her breaths, and Za’tuli made a show of looking around as an excuse to break their eye contact. “If you can find an empty spot, that is.”

Saeri’s head moved in the corner of her vision, and then bobbed once in a nod. “Alright. It’s important to trolls, isn’t it? Sleeping together while you heal?”

Za’tuli nodded as Saeri gracefully danced between wayward hands and feet, coming to rest just out of her line of sight, to her left. “We believe it helps us heal faster, our energy bolstering the wounded.” It was unnerving not being able to see the elf, but she ignored it in favor of petting over Rakkal’s stubbled scalp again. “Do your people… not?”

A sigh, and it almost startled Za’tuli to hear it so plainly. Rakkal didn’t twitch. “Depends on who you ask. My father’s family wouldn’t’ve been caught dead being so… _sentimental_. My mother’s family did it, I think, if only to make sure whoever got hurt didn’t do something stupid, like try and sneak away from the healer.” A pause. “That might’ve been just an excuse, now that I think about it.”

Za’tuli grinned, and somehow knew Saeri saw it, and shared the sentiment. They were silent a long while, the light outside shifting as the moons moved over the sky. Za’tuli spoke when she was half-certain the elf had fallen asleep.

“Is it easier to put behind you when you… when you can see the wound heal and… and scar?” she whispered, halting and hesitant and honest like she couldn’t be when facing the elf. She sounded childish to her own ears and inwardly winced.

She heard the faint brush of fabric over wood and knew Saeri had shrugged, the way you knew which raptor broke the fence before it is even investigated - because you knew the animal involved. “Sometimes. It can help, to watch it. Most times it’s just painful and annoying, and you wish you healed like a troll so it would be over and you could forget about it.”

Za’tuli hummed, something relaxing her between Saeri’s voice and the rough texture of Rakkal’s stubble against the pad of her thumb. She hummed again, half asleep, absently remembering a melody, and it somehow didn’t jar her when Saeri took up the tune beside her.

When Rakkal woke her the sun was high and bright, and he was demanding his brother bring food before he ate someone. Saeri and Zulk were both gone. She made a point to tell Rakkal his little elf teacher told _her _he was stupid and needed more practice, before she went to fetch her own breakfast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I actually was going to make this cata-era before I was like 'naah Za'tuli would be used to this shit by then.'
> 
> Also I feel like these fics are just increasingly blatant games of "spot the headcanon". ...sorry?


	16. Day 16: Pinned Down & Day 17: "Stay With Me"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Za’tuli hissed as another bullet whizzed over their heads.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cata-era!

Za’tuli hissed as another bullet whizzed over their heads. These Loa-forsaken _humans_ and their damned _guns._ She had never found them tolerable - she found them even less so when they were shooting at her and hers. She turned her head, keeping her back pinned flat to the stone pillar she was standing against, and met her husband’s eyes.

“Why are they _here?”_ she growled, and he shrugged, looking far too unconcerned in her opinion, especially compared to the racing pace of her heart in her chest. She growled at him again, both for his lack of response and for how he leaned out from behind the stone block he was hiding against to catch a glimpse of the humans attacking them, very nearly getting his ear shot off. It would have regenerated, but that wasn’t the _point._

“Mad about Hellscream’s bomb, I’d bet,” he said, calm-as-you-please. “There’s not many out there.”

“There are _more than enough,”_ she shot back, the end trailing into an infuriated screech as one of the bullets shot off a fragment of pillar and it flew at her, drawing a line of blood over her arm.

He lifted a hand and waggled it side-to-side at her. “Enough, maybe. Not more than enough.” She glared at him, and realized too late that he had that _gleam_ in his eye. The one that reminded her of the she-elf. The one that meant he would come crawling back to her beaten and bloody, if not missing pieces.

She hated that gleam.

“What do you think you are - _no.”_ She shook her head as he started to grin. Her heart skipped and then sped up even faster in her chest. “No. The watchers will be here soon they must have heard -” Rakkal started to slide back into the shadows. “Rakkal! Stay with me, damn you! You are going to get yourself ki-”

Rakkal ducked out of sight and Za’tuli let out a shriek of pure anxiety and frustration. She couldn’t do anything but stand there, frozen, bullets flying past her, and wait to see who died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Combining prompts, I know. But IRL shit's been terribad lately so I'm just trying to fill them all at this point.


	17. Day 18: Muffled Scream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Za’tuli lunged for Rakkal’s face claws-first, roaring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm catching up! Vanilla-era again.

Za’tuli lunged for Rakkal’s face claws-first, roaring. Her mate dodged back, awkwardly trying to keep her away from his eyes while still supporting her weight. He gave up with a curse, pulling her close instead, trapping her hands between their chests and crushing her face into his shoulder. She struggled, her screams barely muffled against his fur, and dug her nails into whatever skin she could reach.

The contraction passed and left her sides and thighs quaking. She panted against Rakkal and shook like a palm frond in a breeze. When she had caught her breath again she spoke, not bothering to lift her head, her tusks scratching at his shoulder. “I should have asked that bastard for easy _births,_ too.”

Rakkal chuckled, still sounding a little nervous. “There are limits. I could go and pray to -”

_“No,”_ she snarled. “Do not leave me.” Another contraction began, rolling through her from what felt like her sternum to her knees and leaving her gasping.

“Should you lie dow-”

_“I do not want to lie down.”_ The last word trailed off into a screech as she threw her head back. She gasped at the hut’s ceiling, vaguely aware of the healer chuckling behind her. She sobbed, _wishing_ she could lie down. But every time she did the pain grew worse and all she could think about was the last time and her baby - her _baby_ had -

The worst contraction yet wrung her out from her ribs down and she slammed her head into the side of Rakkal’s neck, screaming into his skin. The wordless _agony_ trailed off, letting her hear him muttering sweet-comforts at her. It infuriated her. He knew _nothing._ She would - she would find a fucking _quillboar_ and she would shove it so far up his ass he _spit quills_ and then she would have _him_ shove it out and tell _him_ to fucking _breathe._

The healer laughed again as Rakkal made a frightened noise, and Za’tuli realized she had said her thoughts aloud.

“I will do it,” she told him, scrabbling weakly at his now-bloody fur. He nodded against her hair.

“I’ll let you, priestess, if you remember to breathe next time.”

The next contraction hit and she screamed directly into his ear as she inhaled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you imagine a lady in labor who has TUSKS? Terrifying.
> 
> Fun fact: Her mother is outside whistling jauntily as she whittles random stuff for the baby.


	18. Day 19: Asphyxiation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short but... sweet?

_Hitch. Hitch. _His empty throat spasmed as his chest compressed. Nothing, nothing, less than nothing. _Hitch, hitch, heave_ went his lungs, jumping behind his ribs, struggling for nothing.

His limbs twitched as his lungs cried out for him to get whatever was cutting off his air _away._ It didn’t matter that there wasn’t anything, that there wasn’t a rope around his neck or a cushion over his face or a rag shoved too-far into his mouth. There wasn’t water or dirt to get out of, or a hit to recover from. There was just _nothing,_ violent, shadowed nothing, sucking the air out of his lungs and leaving only darkness and shivering, terrifying pain behind.

Rakkal’s mouth opened with a silent gasp and he gaped like a fish, shaking hands fighting through thick, soupy air to claw at his own throat. He felt tiny rivulets of blood flow down his skin and was suddenly hyper-aware of every inch of his own hide, every strand of fur as it moved in the unnatural wind of his confinement, every jerk and tremble of his muscles. It all added to the buzzing in his head, every new input driving him crazier, ratcheting the fear higher, making his heart pound harder and his lungs strain longer.

His legs kicked out and he tried to scream and failed. His heart _thud-thud-thudded_ in his ears and in his belly and in his fingertips and in his lips and in the tip of his nose. He writhed in mid-air panic whiting out his mind as the lair of air darkened his vision, vague purple-grey shadows going red-and-black-and-sparking as his entire body was starved of air, of _everything._

Everything went black as he fell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Rakkal got hit with a DK's Asphyxiate and promptly panicked himself half to death.  
Fun fact #2: It stops because Za'tuli hits the DK in the face with a Smite or somesuch, most likely while charging full-tilt, screaming Zandali curse words.


	19. Day 20: Trembling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her ma’da was fast, and strong, and would make sure they got to the boats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pre-WoW era. She's about 10 here.

It was a screaming, furious rush as the sea witch’s lightning shot over the sky, mixing and sparking with the lava being launched into the air from the volcano their home had been near. Trolls ran this way and that, calling out to each other, crying out in pain as small rocks and splashes of lava struck them. The skies were dark with the sea witch’s storm clouds and the ash in the air, unnaturally dark, the kind of dark even Hir’eek couldn’t fly through safely.

Za’tuli clung arms-and-legs and hands-and-feet and tusk-and-claw to her ma’da as she ran, bare feet blistering as she paid no mind to the volcanically-heated rocks she had to run over, towards the shore. Za’tuli sniffled and buried her face in her ma’da’s hair and shoulder, too scared to even scream as explosion after impact after crash sounded around them.

Her ma’da was fast, and strong, and would make sure they got to the boats. Her ma’da could do anything. Her ma’da would do it.

Another rock whistled through the air and Za’tuli felt it when it hit her ma’da’s other shoulder. Ma’da grunted and spun, almost falling from the strength of the impact - but she caught her stride instead and kept going, through her right arm spasmed and fell from around Za’tuli’s shoulders. Za’tuli held on tighter, nails caught on the edges of her ma’da’s scales.

It was hot and getting hotter, and every lightning flash lit up Za’tuli’s eyelids even through ma’da’s hair. But they kept going, urged on by the calls and screams and whoops and roars of the other trolls around them. She had never heard so many of the Darkspear speak at once - they had spoken to her mother in twos and threes or not at all, quiet reverence or quiet displeasure and nothing else. Her ma’da’s feet hit the water’s edge with a splash. She had never heard _Zi’tanbi_ or _Za’tuli_ or _priestess_ said so loudly or so happily, or by so many people.

The hands were touching her, feeling her all over, wrapping around her, prying her off her ma’da with quick-short promises that she would be handed back _soon_ but not _now,_ that her ma’da needed a healer, that she couldn’t stay with her. Za’tuli sobbed and fought, shrieking and calling out for her ma’da, for Hir’eek, for _anyone_ \- screaming to outdo the sky as the boat rocked and lurched under her and the Darkspear matrons held her still and swaddled her in furs to pin her flailing arms.

The noise and the rush and the being passed back-and-forth went on and _on,_ and then as suddenly as the hell of noise and fury had started, it stopped. Za’tuli hiccuped into the chest of the Darkspear she had been passed to last - a man, arms locked tight around her to stop her thrashing - and coughed as the fur she had bit from him stuck on her tongue. He shushed her, his voice raw, and when he noticed she had stopped moving he tilted her back and offered her a waterskin.

She drank until he took it away, and then she looked into his face, and she trembled. Once the shaking started, she couldn't stop it. As still as she had been in her mother’s arms, she was quaking twice as much, now. She stared at him and she shook and shook and _shook,_ until he was frowning at her with worry and that only made her shake _more._

She and ma’da had had a little home. Their little house had been at the edge of the village on one of the smaller islands. It had been at the edge of the village at the edge of an island at the edge of _all_ the islands because they were _different._ They were _Zandalari,_ not Darkspear. They were sent to watch, to report back, to make deals if they could, and the Darkspear all knew that, and they didn’t like them, even though they respected ma’da as a priestess. The Darkspear didn’t like them, but they could have always left.

They couldn’t leave, now. They were on a boat filled with Darkspear and strange green brutes, and ma’da wasn’t there, they’d taken her from ma’da. They’d separated them, like they separated the boars from each other when hunting. She wasn’t of their tribe. They would take her, and not give her back, they would _eat_ her, maybe, like they ate anyone else that wasn’t a Darkspear.

She stared up at the Darkspear man’s face andher trembling grew so bad her teeth chattered and the tears were shaken out of her. She cried up at the Darkspear, and he frowned harder, and it made her shake and cry more. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to curl up tight - maybe if she was small, and didn’t make them angry, they wouldn’t - they might not - 

A warm hand pressed over her eyes. Everything went dark, and even as it terrified her she couldn’t stay awake. Leather wings fluttered close in her mind as she lost consciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Troll at the end is unnamed (for now, watch me make another toon, ffs) and is a priest of Hir'eek, which is why she got passed to him.  
also yes her moms name is Zi'tanbi i honestly cant remember if thats been made clear before


	20. Day 21: Laced Drink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The fuck is in this, woman?” he wheezed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Legion era because where else

Rakkal darted between Za’tuli and Ren’jai as he entered the Legerdemain, plucking her full glass from the bar top. “Ale, barkeep!,” he called out, and the bartender chuckled as he pulled out a tankard and filled it. He was used to their antics, by now. Za’tuli yelped and lunged after him, and Rakkal laughed as he danced out of his wife’s reach, her glass of red-and-fruity-smelling alcohol held well away from her. Za’tuli fought for her drink briefly before changing tactics and lunging for his tankard, instead.

“Alright, then,” she started, bracing back against the bar, the Legerdemain’s flimsy barstool tilting precariously under her with the movement. She met his eye, smirking, and the expression had heat building in his belly. “A trade, then.”

She drained the tankard without pausing, and Rakkal forgot what the point of it was supposed to be as he watched her throat work with the action. He licked his lips, entertaining vague thoughts about just going upstairs once she’d finished, and then was jarred out of his daydreams as she slammed the tankard down on the bar with a resounding _bang,_ loud enough patrons on the other side of the bar jumped in their seats.

Rakkal jerked into action, knocking back her mildly fizzy, punk-like concoction - she’d been introduced to it by Saeri, he was fairly certain - just in time to not spill any as she lunged at him again, stool clattering back into the bar but not, somehow, falling to the floor. She cackled at him as he gasped when the drink hit his belly.

“The _fuck_ is in this, woman?” he wheezed. She patted him on the belly.

“Oh, some of this. Some of that.” Maybe he shouldn’t have encouraged her to make friends with his elf-auntie. “I think my favorite part is how the drop of nightwine makes the rum burn your lips. Makes you really taste the berries.” He _definitely_ shouldn’t have encouraged it.

But… “My lips aren’t burning,” he said, but he could hear it wasn’t quite right even as he spoke, because - “They’re numb.”

Za’tuli’s grinning face waved like a mirage on the beach as she frowned. It made him smile. He wondered if her cheeks would jiggle like that when she’d gotten old and fat and content in her old age, like her ma’da. He hoped so. He’d like that. He reached out to pat her cheek and missed twice before managing it, though half his hand was on her ear, instead.

She covered his hand with her own and said something, but it sounded like she was talking through water. He shook his head and it made him lose his balance. He reared back as the world spun, and heard the clear crash-and-chime of the glass he’d been holding break against the floor as the world tilted alarmingly. Colors danced at the edges of his vision as strong hands - at least three pairs - propped him up and righted his head so he wasn’t staring at the bookshelves behind him anymore.

“Whaais?” he slurred, and Za’tuli’s face filled his vision again, Ren’jai’s shaggy red mop and burning gold eyes hovering behind her. White hair filled the other side of his vision, attached to the cold set of hands, he thought. And there were more voices around them, loud and confusing and some of them angry and he couldn’t _think,_ he couldn’t get a full thought out, it was like he’d been -

_“Dru’d,”_ he tried, and no one understood, he could tell. He brought a hand up and slapped himself using the brief - too brief, and far too faint - spark of pain to focus on making his lips and tongue and teeth work together. “Dru-uhgd,” he got out, and Ren’jai got it first, hissing like a wet cat as she whipped around.

Just watching it made him dizzy and he turned to avoid it, which made the dizziness worse. He leaned into the cold to his left and gagged, but held his stomach in check. He needed - something. He needed _something,_ but his mind was too scattered and fuzzy to figure out what. The colors kept morphing and swirling over his eyes even when he squeezed them closed, sweat breaking out over his forehead.

He heard a crash by the door - he thought, everything was too-loud but too-far, but he’d felt things like this before and he thought, he could think he -

He gagged again and couldn’t keep it down this time, but someone was apparently paying more attention than he was, and a bucket was somehow already there. He clung to the cold-person as someone else held the bucket for him, and then water was being poured into his mouth. Yes, water. He’d needed water. Water and -

The next drink of water was bitter with herbs and he remembered the taste. Saeri’s mix of antitoxin - he’d trained with it. It would fix him.

Eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: the crash he hears is indeed the person who tried to drug Za'tuli getting tackled to the ground by a couple hundred pounds of pissed-off Ren'jai.  
Fun fact #2: the "cold person" is Drago's DK because him being a walking fridge will never not amuse me, and that's his go-to bar, too.


	21. Day 22: Hallucination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tonight, she flew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> juuuuuust pre-vanilla era.

Za’tuli knelt under the wide, round moons, her hands steady as she accepted the cup from her mother’s hands, motions slow, reverent. The gazes of the other priests were heavy on her bare skin, glowing gold-like-embers with the reflection of the moons’ light. It would be no surprise _who_ she would see. Her loa had been known since before they came to Kalimdor.

What was unknown was _what_ she would see.

Her mother began to chant, quietly at first and then louder as the trolls around them joined in. This was a ritual that was shared between Darkspear and Zandalari. This was a ritual that was shared by all trolls. This was _home,_ and heart, and _soul._

She brought the cup to her lips, feeling the worn-smooth bone against her skin for a moment, breathing in the scent of herbs, of blood, of magic, of _power._ She tipped the potion into her mouth slowly, careful not to lose a drop, arching backward as it emptied in an attempt to get even the very last drops. She straightened, gasping more from the tingling burn of the magic pouring down her throat than from the short time she had held off on breathing to swallow it all.

She handed the cup back to her mother with equal veneration. Zi’tanbi took it without a single hitch or pause in her chant, her eyes steady, watchful. Zi’tanbi was not her _mother_ tonight - tonight she was a High Priestess, a conduit of a loa’s power. Tonight she was a judge, and a guide, and a tether. She would do her duty, and no more, as was right.

Za’tuli felt the burn start to spread through her flesh, pulsing out with every third beat of her heart - then every second beat, and then _every _beat. The heat of it swelled in time with her pulse and then _flared_ at the same instant her heart stilled, and then they both sped up, faster and faster, and she was only dimly aware of her body shaking and her mouth dropping open as her heart was forced to beat more rapidly than it was ever meant to. It galloped in her chest, urged on by the fire inside of her veins, and she spread her arms wide at her sides in a mindless attempt to make _more_ of herself, a desperate bid to make space for it.

The beating, pulsing, flaring, wild _surge_ of power lifted her further and further, and she felt as if she were floating, flying, gliding. She no longer felt the sand under her knees and shins, or the cool night breeze whisking away the heat of her body. All she could feel was the power, spread like wings, keeping her aloft.

_**My child,**_ came his voice - rumbling, screeching, roaring, whispering, chittering, rattling, thrumming, so many voices, the voice of every one of his children, the voice of the night itself. She shuddered at the feel of it around her, inside of her, passing through her.

_Hir’eek,_ she answered, unable to think of anything more formal, more acceptable for a moment like this. He laugher was maddening and wonderful at once. She had never heard him so clearly.

_ **I am weak, my child. I have been weak for a very long time. I cannot come to you as easily as you can come to me. But you are here now. I will guide you through this night.** _

She could see him, now, flying beside her. He was enormous - wings easily three times the span of her own, limbs long and bloodstained, his mouth open wide and dripping-red and he laughed at her awe. He banked left and she followed, enjoying the cool wind over her leathery wings, sliding through her thin fur. She was as he was, and couldn’t remember when she had changed.

_ **You have not changed - you are as you always are. A bat, a child of the night and the air and the hidden places.** _

He flew so much faster than she ever could, but he never grew any further away as they darted and dove and glided and weaved over the islands, and then further, over the sands of Durotar washed pale and silver under the light of the moons, over the tall grasses and sparse trees of the Barrens, over dense forests and jungles and deserts. She saw giant insects and felt her loa’s hunger, and his regret that they could not feast this night. She saw elves, and only the memory of his restraint kept hers strong. She saw snow for the first time and thought that, one day, she would walk through it.

But tonight, she flew.

The night stretched, and she saw the land under them change. They did not cross the seas but the land still shifted - it rolled and split, it exploded into new shapes. It pained her, and she cried out, but Hir’eek did not stop and so neither could she. The land continued to change, the waters rising in some places, receding in others. Mountains splitting with groans of pain. The moons still shone above them but people began milling around beneath them, screaming and fighting, a thousand wars playing out before her eyes, the rending pain of each impact and cut and _death_ spiking through her.

_Hir’eek,_ she wailed. _Hir’eek! Make it stop! Make them stop!_

His cry split the night air in answer, but if anything it made the fighters below more frenzied and violent. _**This is what shall be, and what shall be stopped. But I will not be the one to stop it. You might not be the one to stop it, you might not be the one to start it. But you will live it, child. Prepare accordingly.**_

They dove, then, and she screamed as the force of the wind ripped the wings from her limbs and the air from her lungs.

_ **Time grows short. I cannot show you more. Bring me power, child, and bring me blood, and I will be your guide through this.** _

She hit the ground, and she _shattered, _lifting her wingless arms to cover her face. She didn’t feel the sand when she hit it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: this has near-0 basis in canon I'm just headcanoning entire ceremonies for troll priests now shhh it's fine  
Fun fact #2: i literally could not write this until i got some bass boosted shit playing


	22. Day 23: Bleeding Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They hadn't done anything wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> late cata/early MoP era, roughly

There was just so _much_ of it.

Rakkal’s hands slipped, letting another gush of red pour from the slit in hairless, green hide. He hurriedly resettled them. He’d never, not once, wished his mate had fur, before this moment. She was perfect as she was. But if she were Darkspear, if she had fur like he did, his grip on her side would be less slippery. He could hold easier, hold tighter.

She breathed in, her ribs expanding under his grip, and he let out a high, panicked whine as he desperately tried to keep the pressure on her side steady through the movement. A sudden spark of memory flashed through his mind like lightning, and he quickly swung a leg over her, straddling her hips - and no _wonder_ she always slid into this position as she healed. Her next breath went easier as he used his weight to hold the jagged cut closed even as he rode out the motion of her body.

But the blood kept _coming._ Every shift of his hands had trickles spilling over his knuckles, every time she breathed it was a dice-throw whether it would make her cough, and every time she coughed more blood spattered out of her mouth and onto both their faces, and spurted out from between his shaking fingers. He panted in terror as more and more red flowed out, staining the ground around them.

Everything was disjointed - his body stayed locked in place, adjusting as it had to, desperately clinging to her side, to her _life. _And-then his heart thundered, slamming into his ribs, pounding out a plea to anything that would listen to help her heal just a little faster, or for someone to find them. And-then-again his mind raced, spinning wildly between what he could do, what he had seen Za’tuli do to and for others - and, uselessly, his mind got caught now-and-then on memories, and it’s own stupid, dragging panic.

They hadn't done anything _wrong._ They’d only been out gathering herbs. A nice walk, but one with a purpose. They had been talking, laughing. They _hadn’t done anything wrong._

Za’tuli groaned in pain under him and Rakkal felt more than heard himself mutter comforting nonsense. She settled, heaving a breath again, and he thought he heard her curse. That was his priestess. If he lost her…

They had _children_ at home, he’d begged. He had _begged._ Caught under the hot Durotar sun, shirtless, armorless, thinking he was _safe,_ that they _both_ were safe, his daggers slapped out of his hands to lie uselessly in the sand - of course he had _begged._ Za’tuli had been bristling and hissing behind him, and he and done his best to stand in front of her, shield her from their eyes, give them another target, even as he’d tried to bow and scrape enough to get them to leave them _alone._

He could feel her flesh trying to knit itself together under his hands. He mumbled encouragement to her, to her skin, to the magic held inside her. He knew she would have healed this easily if she could, but the blow to her head had her out of it, too dizzy to focus. That frightened him too, the swollen, bleeding, red-smeared spot over-and-to-the-side-of her right eye. But it wasn’t as much of a threat as the serrated edges of the gash his palms were pressed to.

What would he tell their babies? How could he face them, after having to drag their mother’s corpse back, and explain that he hadn’t been able to defend her? That he hadn’t even been able to hold the blood in her body long enough for her to heal herself? Grief welled up in his gut and chest, rage nipping at its heels. If she died, the pain wouldn’t stop with her, or with him. It had him seething. Those orc _pigs - _those _Kor’kron_ \- they would _pay._ But oh, the guilt. How slow he had been, how useless, as they’d jeered and poked at them. As they’d finally grown angry with her for her defiance and attacked. He had been busied by the first two, and had forgotten to keep track of the third - stupid, _stupid _\- until he’d come up from the side and taken his shortblade to Za’tuli’s exposed side.

Za’tuli moved again, rolling a bit further onto her side, and Rakkal had to kick at one-or-the-other of the orcs’ limbs - he didn’t care which, to whose - to make room for his leg. She was so weak, she had lost so much blood. She needed - they needed - they just needed a little _more, _a little _time._

The shadows had gotten longer, stretching out from the cliff-wall to mingle with the strewn mess of Za’tuli’s hair. Rakkal blinked the sweat out his eyes, and could swear the wound was a little shorter, now. A little easier to cover with his sticky, slick hands. He drew in a full breath and gagged on the taste of _her _blood on the air.

He wasn’t a man of ritual, or of faith, beyond what he couldn’t avoid. His life was his. His fate was his. But - but _maybe,_ for _her,_ they would listen to him.

_“Bwonsamdi,”_ he rattled out through gritted teeth, throat so dry it hurt. _“Hir’eek._ One of you -” he coughed, pressing harder, hating the pained sound that slipped out between Za’tuli’s lips. “Help her. One of you bastards _help her.”_

He stayed, and he prayed, and he pressed. It was all he could do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Kor'kron are dicks, this is known!


	23. Day 24: Secret Injury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “ - infantile, moronic, ludicrous -”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early Cata era! Just after they're fully settled on the Isles again.

“Of all the _ridiculous,_ idiotic, hare-brained -”

Rakkal nodded in time with his wife’s increasingly impressive list of adjectives. He caught Ta’liki mirroring him out of the corner of his eye and it took immense effort not to laugh. Even if it was silent, Za’tuli would feel it, with her hands on his ribs like this.

“ - infantile, moronic, ludicrous-”

Rakkal winced as she pressed on one of his broken ribs, assessing the damage. It would have healed on its own, without her help. All of their injuries would have - his ribs and ankle, Ta’liki’s (now healed) scraped knees, hands, thighs, and cheek. It had just been a small incident, really. There hadn’t been any need to sit and be poked and prodded for ages when they could be cleaning their kills and starting a roast.

“ - stupid, shortsighted, ignorant -”

His baby girl’s first hunt hadn’t gone perfectly smoothly. Only a few minutes in and a snake had lunged at her face. Rakkal had managed to grab it a handspan from the tip of her nose, but it still scared the both of them. He’d almost turned back then, but Ta’liki has insisted on continuing, and what kind of father would he have been if he’d coddled her?

But what they’d thought had been a small, if fat, boar had turned out to be a very _large_ boar, with very large tusks, skin and bone and rabid, with rather small hooves. It had run them up a palm tree, and Ta’liki had been very brave and hung on well, but palm bark was unforgiving to young hides - especially with an angry boar ramming the tree insanely until it broke its own neck.

“ - dense, brainless, foolish - “

His ribs hurt, and the terror of knowing his daughter was in danger was still fresh in his mind, but Za’tuli’s reaction had him fighting a smile. They’d tried to avoid her as they slunk into town, Rakkal carrying the sickly boar’s carcass to see if the bones or hide, at least, could be salvaged, and Ta’liki dragging - with far more difficulty - the bodies of two larger, healthy boars they had caught unawares. Pride flared in his chest at the thought, quickly snuffed by a burn as Za’tuli began mending his ribs.

“ - thickheaded, imbecilic, irresponsible -”

“Toldya we shoulda gone to Gadrin,” Ta’liki whispered. Rakkal began to nod at _her,_ rather than in time with his wife’s worry-fueled badgering, and then froze as Za’tuli’s head whipped up so she could glare at him eye-to-eye. He shook his head instead, very exaggeratedly moving his head back and forth, scrunching his face up in the best frown he could manage as he flicked his eyes to the side to make sure Ta’liki was watching.

Ta’liki giggled at him at the same time that Za’tuli snarled.

“ - _dimwitted_ things you could have done,” she growled, finishing up her litany of adjectives which apparently described her mate and children, and which Rakkal could not, in this instance, refute. “You decide to _sneak off_ and just _hide_ the fact you are both injured? The risk of infection - loa take me. These breaks are hours old. When did you even get them?”

“His branch snapped,” Ta’liki piped up helpfully. Rakkal watched Za’tuli’s eye twitch.

“His branch snapped.”

“Yeah! After the boar kept hitting our tree.”

“The _boar.”_

“Mhm. The rabid one. We got two better ones, after.”

Za’tuli took a very long, calming inhale. Rakkal did his level best to not grin. “Three boars, one of them rabid, and a tree did this to you?” she asked, still staring Rakkal in the eye. He nodded.

“Our girl did very well on her first hunt.” His lips twitched. “Except at the end. She should have snuck by the hut more quietly.”

Ta’liki leapt into a run at the same instant he did, a full beat before Za’tuli’s frustrated roar broke through the evening air. Rakkal cackled, scooping up his daughter as they ran, and made for Gadrin’s hut. The old witchdoctor would finish patching them up, and would probably set Bom’bay to keep Za’tuli from interrupting.

Ta’liki’s cackling was loud in his ear, but he could still hear Za’tuli’s over it. He laughed with them, ignoring the catch in his side from the break she hadn’t gotten to yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not painfully whumpy, but just imagine Za'tuli's panic over her daughter covered in smeared blood and it's there.  
Fun fact: Za'tuli isn't mad they went on the hunt (she knew about it long beforehand, and it's tradition) she's mad they 1: kept going after being injured and 2: didn't come right to her to get healing. Also, again - baby girl covered in smeared blood. Panic reaction xD  
Fun fact 2: this was one of the hardest ones to write so far solely because I couldn't for the longest time figure out why anyone would hide a serious injury from a priest, why a priest would NEED to hide a serious injury when she could heal it, or why a minor injury would need to be hidden at all with trolls. BUT WE GOT THERE, BOIS.


	24. Day 25: Humiliation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tree rat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BfA Era! (obv)

Rakkal helped Za’tuli off the ship, grinning as she squealed over being lifted by his grip on her waist. She swatted at him and he kissed her. They were both giddy fools - her over returning to her childhood home for the first time, him for finally being off that fucking ship. He kissed her on the cheek, on the forehead, on the chin, and she grabbed him by the tusk to drag him down and kiss his mouth again before pulling back, smiling.

“There are shrines to Bwonsamdi in the city. Go find one and give your thanks for your hide - I know you want to.” She poked his chest when he ducked his head, wincing at how well she knew him. “I will go find out where we are staying. I will have a runner come tell you when I know.”

He frowned at her. “And how’ll they know which fuzzy cousin is the right one?”

She snorted at him and flicked his forehead gently. “Did you not notice you are the only Darkspear on this ship who does _not _have blindingly red or orange hair?”

“Well I _have-”_

She poked his forehead. “Do not be smart with me. You shaved it off, you no longer have it.” SHe poked him again for laughing. “Begone. Say hello to Bwonsamdi. Ask him if my mother has threatened him yet, if he shows up. I will find our rooms.”

Rakkal stepped back and bowed low, elf-style and fancy, the way Saeri had taught them before allowing them to go to Silvermoon. “As you wish, priestess.”

He ducked away from her half-hearted kick, chuckling along with the ten or so Darkspear who were also lingering on the docks, Taz’rin among them. Rakkal tilted his head questioningly at his brother and got an eye roll in return, so Rakkal left him to his own devices with a shrug. Most Darkspear didn’t have his aversion to sailing.

He shuddered as he walked away from the group and towards a guard. The last day or so had been better, one he could see the shore. But the days before that had been pure hell, with nothing but sea and sky around them for as far as the eye could see. His wife and brother could mock him as much as they wanted, he was going to thank whoever would listen for not letting them drown or starve out there.

The first guard he approached was busy fishing stolen trinkets out of a boy’s pocket by the time Rakkal got to her, so he moved on to the next. He was leaning against a wall and looked bored enough to answer a newcomer’s question, if only for something different to do than stand and stare.

Rakkal approached him with a wave and a grin. “‘Ello. My wife told me the city had shrines for Bwonsamdi, somewhere. Can you show -”

The guard pointed with his left hand, the right boredly spinning his polearm, not even looking at Rakkal. “Keep going up the stairs. Stay to the left, you’ll find it.”

Rakkal internally rolled his eyes. He nodded, grin fixed in place, and thanked the guard before turning to go.

_“Tree rat.”_

Rakkal froze, then slowly turned back around to face the guard. “Would you like to say that to my face, or keep being a petty coward?” he asked, keeping his tone just as friendly as before.

The guard sneered at him, finally stopping his fiddling with his weapon. “Mind your tongue, Darkspear.” The guard looked him up and down and huffed. “Actually, I want to know -how few males _were _there in your backwater that a Zandalari settled for _you?_ Some scrawny, Bwonsamdi-loving little rat? You’ve even uglier than the rest of your kind I’ve seen.”

Rakkal sneered right back at him, heat flushing over his skin as some of the Zandalari around them turned to watch. “There were plenty of _males,_ but you’re proving right now how rare it is to find an actual _man._ I’ve always counted myself lucky she was used to untested Zandalari _boys.”_

The crowd chuckled, fickle in who they supported, only there for the amusement of a fight. The guard hissed, his ears flattening back to his head. “She’s back home now, Darkspear. She’ll find a _real_ mate soon enough.”

“Not all trolls have as little loyalty as you seem used to, mon,” Rakkal shot back, fury building in his chest at the slight to his wife. “I’d pity your mate - if I thought you’d ever managed to get one.”

“I pity _you,”_ the guard spat. “For being so blind to how lowly a _rat_ you really are, and how little time you have left before she sees that, now that she’s back among _real_ trolls.”

The guard spun on his heel and marched off before Rakkal could do more than bare his teeth in response. Rakkal growled, but managed to keep himself in check. He couldn’t stalk the bastard down and slit his throat for the insults - not with a dozen or so Zandalari all watching, tittering like mindless birds at the show. Embarrassment burnt at his hide worse than the Zuldazar sun’s heat, but he stamped it down and continued on his way.

***

It took him hours to _find_ the fucking shrine, climbing ever loa-forsaken, sadistic set of steps, but he made it. He had just finished his prayer of thanks - and if he’d slid in a request for a quiet moment in a dark alley with the guard from earlier, then that was between him and his loa - when a little whelp ran up to him, eyes wide.

Rakkal side-eyed the boy. “Can I help you, mon?”

The scrawny whelp beamed at him. “Priestess Za’tuli sent me to get you. She said I might find you here - I’m glad I did, I hate the stairs.”

Rakkal snorted, standing and brushing himself off - and trying, and failing, to brush off the lingering sting of the guard’s comments with the dust. “You and me both. Well go on, show me where to go.”

The rooms they had been given were just off the Great Seal, apparently. One room, no windows, but comfortable. Cushions spread all over, a couple of low tables, simple shelves for storage, herb rushes in the ceiling to keep the air fresh. He could feel the gentle pulse of cooling charms coming off some of the stones in the walls, and a screen separated what he assumed was the sleeping area from the rest of the space.

He heard a soft curse from behind the screen, and then Za’tuli was coming out from behind it. The low light of the central brazier had her skin shine like emeralds, her black hair glinting with blue highlights as she growled and spun it into a messy bun on top of her head, frustrated with it. She was nude, and damp-all-over, and he could smell her soap fresh on the air. She was _gorgeous._

And his tongue burned to ask her the stupid, _stupid_ questions that buzzed just under his skin.

She looked up mid-way through wrestling her hair into submission and looked him dead in the eye. “You are not as sneaky as you think you are.” She smiled to take the sting out of her words and he tried to not let them add to the scratching, crawling feeling inside his chest. She gestured at the boy hovering behind him “Pay the whelp so he does not tell his friends to pick our pockets later, and then come help me.”

He dug a few gold out of his pocket and passed it to the boy wordlessly, not trusting his tongue enough to speak. The boy whooped and left with a “Thanks, richmon!”, and Rakkal hoped he hadn’t just overpaid himself into being annoyed by a herd of bored children looking for sweets-money his entire stay.

He closed the door behind the child and crossed to where Za’tuli had found a cushion she liked and settled in. She looked so at home here. His tongue burned again as he knelt behind her, hands falling into motions long-ago made habit as he undid her messy knot and started separating lengths of her hair to braid.

The buzzing under his skin was so loud he almost didn’t hear her ask how he liked the city. He shrugged, buying another second to force his tongue to order before he spoke. “It’s beautiful,” he told her, more echoing sentiments he’d heard other visitors make than stating any opinion of his own. He tried to sound wry as he tacked on “There are a lot of stairs.” but mostly just sounded bitter to his own ears.

Not just his own. Za’tuli turned as he finished off the simple braid, nearly pulling it from his grip as he tied it off with the leather strip she’d been using to bind it into a halfhearted bun. “What is wrong, Rakkal?”

His tongue _itched._ So many things were wrong, and they were all _stupid._ That burned him more than the guard’s insults had, really - that he let them stick, that they clung to his fur like burrs, hours later. That he was so thin-skinned, so unsure of himself, that he couldn’t just laugh it off as another prick among many, stirring shit to make himself feel better.

Za’tuli turned to face him fully and lifted herself on her knees so he had to tilt his head up to watch her face. She frowned at him, cupping his cheeks. “What is it? Who am I going to have to kill? Or did you already take care of that?”

He snorted, then sighed, fighting the press of her hands to rest his forehead on her breasts. He sighed again, and she brushed her hand back along the faint stubble on his scalp. “I want to ask you something. It’s a stupid question,” he mumbled, nuzzling further into soft skin, mindful of his tusks. She sighed at him.

“Ask, then.”

“You’ll probably hit me for it.”

“I will probably hit you if you do not, now. You might as well earn it.”

His face burned, his chest constricting, and he wrapped his arms around her to keep her from pulling back. “D’you - will you really -” he growled at himself, hiding his face deeper between her breasts. She had to shuffle closer as he held on tighter, and it only made him more humiliated that he _had to ask._ “Will you stay with me, now that you can - now that there are other Zandalari around?”

The silence _echoed._ He winced, pressing his face to her so hard he saw sparkles in the darkness behind his eyelids. He wasn’t even sure she was _breathing._ Finally, she inhaled - so deeply he was briefly smothered by the motion of her chest. He winced again.

“You were right - I will hit you.” Her fingers drummed over his skull, and he suddenly pictured her using it as a water glass. “But not right now. Right now, I -” She sighed, and then muttered something barely-audible about _men_ and _fools_. “_Yes,_ I will continue to stay with you, my _mate,_ my _husband,_ the father of my _eight_ children, my own _personal_ idiot.” Each word was a little louder, and angrier, and Rakkal cringed into her chest. She snarled above his head, and swatted his shoulder.

But then she breathed out slowly, and started petting his head again. He let the quiet lay for a little while, then hugged her. “Thank you.”

She ran her nails gently over his scalp. “You are welcome. Will you stop hiding in my breasts, now?”

Heat filled his cheeks again at the thought, and he shook his head. “Not until I can look you in the eye without dying over this.”

She chuckled at him, rubbing his left ear faux-idly. “Alright. But then you have to tell me what brought this on.” She flicked his other ear with her thumb. “_All _of it.”

He sighed, and he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I took like 2 1/2 hrs to find smth one of these two would be humiliated over - and he's still more humiliated over having to ask her, than the event itself.  
Fun fact #2: i HATE writing humiliation


	25. Day 26: Abandoned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The incense was burning low.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BfA era

Za’tuli massaged the back of her neck, tongue working nervously over her tusks. The incense was burning low, only faint threads of smoke spiralling away from the thick, well-pressed stick. She breathed in the scent of it, heavy and musky-sweet with a faint burn, and tried to relax.

She sat still, legs folded under her, hands-to-knees and knees-to-cushion, and felt around in her mind for the presence she had expected, but failed to find. There was nothing within her besides herself, and her brow furrowed at the discomfort it caused her. Hir’eek had _always_ answered - it might have been only a brush against the back of her mind or a comforting presence beside her soul, but he _answered_. But recently there had been nothing when she reached out, not even the echo of his laughter for the flutter of his wings.

It unnerved her. She had not felt this lonely, this alone, this _abandoned,_ since she was a small girl left alone at home in a foreign tribe as her mother went to tend to the people.

Exhaustion pulled at her limbs from the effort of reaching out into _nothing,_ but still she stayed, prayers long over, and watched the incense burn away to ash. She stayed longer still, until the braziers burnt low, and then to nothing. She stayed until the moons were directly above her in the sky, their light pouring in from the open balcony curtain. Only then did she rise, thoughtless except for the constant searching, seeking, within her own mind.

She stood under the midnight sky and called to its Lord, to her Loa, until the moons passed their zenith and moved behind the temple.

He did not answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short (and sweet?), Za'tuli doesn't linger much in wondering, she goes to Nazmir to find him herself soon after.  
(and we all know how that ends)


	26. Day 27: Ransom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She had plenty of will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BfA Era - Za'tuli Loses Her Shit

Za’tuli felt calm as she strode over the marshy ground, holding her weight so her toes sunk deeper than her heels, murky water flooding in between them with each step. Zulk’eta kept pace with her, lanky and loping directly to her left, while Ren’jai slunk along to her right. Taz’rin growled lowly on Zulk’eta’s other side and she caught the glint of his spear out of the corner of her eye. She could hear Tokal and his raptors taking up the rear of their little expedition.

Her hands flexed into fists at her sides, and she consciously forced them to hang loose - again. She had done the same thing a million times since they began their trek, following the tracks left by the blood trolls after they had taken Rakkal.

She ground her teeth. They had taken her _mate._

Rage bubbled up like blood from a gut wound, hot and foul and liquid. It stuck to her, pooling in the dips and creases. It clung sticky-wet to her mind as she continued walking, her pace even, her breath unhurried. Soon enough they neared the edge of the blood troll camp.

She did not slow as she neared the first lookout, and it did not matter that it saw her approach, as it fell limp-and-lifeless from its watchtower, an arrow in its throat. Ren’jai broke into a run, muck and water spraying everywhere under the speed and power of her sprint. The first two blood trolls to come near her fell before they even raised their weapons, one silently, its neck snapped, the other with a scream as her leg shattered under Ren’jai’s kick. Taz’rin charged forward with a bellow after his sister, steps thundering, spear piercing through two more trolls before reinforcements could come to the sound of the scream.

Another of Tokal’s arrows shot past her head and embedded itself in an enemy’s eye. The air of its passing tickled her ear, and Za’tuli shook her head, the gold clasps on her braids clicking together. She continued the motion, rolling her shoulders back, spreading her arms out, fingers splayed wide as she _pulled_, her arms rising, shadows forming in her palms and dripping between her fingers. The dead were restless, here, hidden in the cracks and shadows of the marsh - broken remnants of those the blood trolls sacrificed, Bwonsamdi’s cast-offs, and lost fools all miserable together in the muck and grime.

Her heart thudded against her ribs with the effort even as her mind still felt cool-and-calm, open-wide, accepting of the writhing mass of confused spirits. She remembered playing with her _little loa_ as a child as she gathered the spirits here. The faded, powerless remnants of the dead along the shores of Durotar were pale flickers in comparison to these, but even they had had more self-sense, more identity. The dead here had more power, and absolutely no will to use it.

She had _plenty_ of will.

She tilted her head to the right, watching the melee just ahead of her with the kind of blank, distant observation she usually associated with extreme blood loss. The spirits, her dark little spirits, curled around her limbs and slid through her fingers, winding tighter and tighter around her, awaiting her orders. She took a deep breath in, and where she would normally have begun chanting her prayers to Hir’eek - who no longer answered - or Bwonsamdi - who was far too close in this place, and far too _smug _in the wake of Hir’eek’s silence - she _screamed_ instead.

Her own howl rang in her ears as she thrust her arms forward, spirits launching themselves from her skin with groans and cries that echoed her own cold, echoing fury. They moved between her and her targets like smears of shadow in midair, and when they struck the blood trolls they burst wide, wrapping around their faces and throats and chests, and then _contracted._

She gasped an inhale, her lungs burning, and pulled back on her shadowy leashes like she was reining in a galloping raptor. Warm, sticky power flooded into her through her spirits. It almost choked her, filling her throat like thick, clotted blood, but she continued, pulling and _devouring_ through her spirits until a half-dozen or so blood trolls were sprawled in the shallow puddles made by the impact of their bodies on the marshy ground, gasping as their lungs fought until they failed.

All was silent for a moment, and she took the opportunity to take in the status of her friends and family. They were all unharmed - Zulk’eta and Ren’jai were grinning at her, Tokal was humming as he rubbed his raptors between the eyes, and Taz’rin was panting and digging his toes into the patch of grass he stood on. All unharmed, not even a scratch.

Good.

The feeling-that-was-_not-_calm expanded in her chest, icy edges spiking into her lungs. She breathed through it, nodding to the others to move further into the blood troll settlement. They did not know if Rakkal was being kept here, or had been moved further into the swamp. They did not know why he had been taken, instead of simply killed. They did not know _anything,_ except he was being held without ransom, without the chance for a release besides death - and possibly not even that.

She growled, and then let out two sharp whistles. Her bat and fel bat spiraled down from the canopy to flutter about her head, and she touched their minds briefly, sending them away again when they had no new news about Rakkal. She stepped forward as they flew off, watching as if through a wall of glass as Taz’rin launched himself into the center of a group of blood trolls with a whoop, Zulk’eta following behind, clutching a totem in one hand and directing healing magic toward Taz’rin with the other.

A thought struck her, and she could tell that a frenzy was hovering at the edge of her mind by how funny she found it - the blood trolls valued blood more than gold. She _would_ free Rakkal by paying ransom. A ransom made of burbling red, and of dark, sticky, spreading pools in the marsh. She cackled, letting go even as she took firmer hold of the spirits around her, her vision washing over with red.

_They_ would pay it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rakkal needs to quit getting kidnapped tbh.


	27. Day 28: Beaten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They were all sore in more ways than one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When the trolls are evicted from Org - with is MoP era, I believe? I'm tired y'all idk

Rakkal crouched with his siblings on the wagon, Ren’jai and Zulk’eta curled together under his right arm, Taz’rin’s head resting on his left shoulder. They were all sore in more ways than one. Rakkal’s cheekbone, fractured by a Kor’kron gauntlet. Ren’jai’s twisted wrist from when she’d been forced into the wagon by way of her arm held behind her back. Taz’rin’s bruised ribs from the shield bash he’d taken to his chest. Zulk’eta’s broken nose, which had him sniffling blood and snot every few seconds, from when he’d been slammed into a wall at the start of all of it.

And thrumming through them all, the aching _wrench_ of their battered pride.

They had been beaten physically, and now, cast out of their city on a rickety cart like so much trash, it dawned on Rakkal that they had also been _beaten,_ that the Kor’kron and Hellscream had won the nearly-invisible game of tug-of-war that had been going on ever since Hellscream had been given the mantle of Warchief and Vol’jin had made his feelings on the matter clear. Rakkal let his head fall back, hitting the side of the wagon with a hollow _thunk._ It hadn’t mattered that tensions in the city were rising, or that Vol’jin had made friends - made _allies_ \- with forces beyond Durotar. It hadn’t mattered that half the trolls around him on this wagon, from shivering whelp to muttering elder, had made Orgrimmar their _home._ None of it mattered in the face of Hellscream’s rage and - admittedly partially _deserved _\- paranoia.

Rakkal swallowed harshly, holding his siblings tighter to himself as the wagon hit a bump and Zulk’eta sniffled again. Rakkal rested his nearly-healed cheekbone on Zulk’eta’s bright green hair and ignored the fact that his nose had finished healing several minutes before. Today, they were beaten. They would settle everyone into Sen’jin and the Isles, and lick their wounds, and comfort each other as best they could.

But they would not _remain_ beaten, and Hellscream would have a lot more to be paranoid about when they were on their feet again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I've been trying to pin this fucking idea to a prompt for several days now.  
Fun fact 2: I expected this to be a bit longer but what can you do.


	28. Day 29: Numb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She still could not stop herself from hoping she would wake up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BfA again~

Her hands had been shaking as Rakkal had grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her away from the body. They were still shaking now, hours later, curled up against his chest by their campfire, their friends and family close around them. Reeik, her batling, hung upside-down from Rakkal’s tusk and chirped at her now-and-then as if to check on her. She acknowledged each of these things in turn, hyper-aware of every sound and movement, but none of it seemed _real._

Nothing had seemed real since the feeling-sound-_pain_ of Hir’eek dying, his death-screech echoing in her ears and her mind and her _soul._ Not even his hot, rank, corrupted blood flowing over her feet, like a gentle tide along the shore, had felt truly _real._ It had felt off-beat and over saturated, like a nightmare. But she had not slept.

She still could not stop herself from hoping she would wake up.

Kekri screeched above them, her flicking fel-flame bright in the darkness of the swamp’s canopy. Za’tuli sobbed at the sound, even as she could not quite _feel_ the despair that made her do it. She knew it was there, but it did not touch her. It lurked just out of reach, hovering in the unreachable darkness at the back of her mind.

She wondered if that darkness would linger forever, taking up the space where Hir’eek had once been. The thought shook her numbness, sending a terrible, rattling tremor through her very _bones,_ but it did not get rid of it. Rakkal’s arms tightened around her and she heard the soothing-nonsense cadence of his voice, but the words escaped her. More voices joined his as she wept, more hands touching her, more limbs squeezing her. She wished she could feel the comfort they offered. She wished she could feel anything.

Even agony would be better than this wracking, echoing, shaking _numbness_ in her mind, like her soul’s echo of that final, mortal scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two just don't wanna talk about their feelings, guys. So shoooort.  
Fun fact 1: The fel bat is a girl and the normal bat is a boy. This is 0% important.  
Fun fact 2: this is set almost immediately after "Ransom" - they clear out the camp, rescue/heal Rakkal, and find corrupted!Hir'eek, much like in game, and then ofc kill Hir'eek. It's super fun just fun times all around y'all.


	29. Day 30: Recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Darkspear had long since proven that proximity to each other sped up their recovery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BfA, a bit after the last one.

Za’tuli puttered around their suite in Zuldazar, picking and putting and poking things that didn’t need any of it. She could feel Rakkal’s eyes on her and decided to ignore him until it was his turn to be prodded. She stepped over Zulk’eta and Ren’jai’s combined, sprawling mass of limbs in the center of her floor, wondering if they would wake even if she _did_ step on them. The next hurdle was the half-ring of dozing raptors around the bed - that, at least, she had _asked_ for, after the third attempt Taz’rin had made to curl up with his brother. Normally that would have been fine, but the bed was small and Taz’rin was _not,_ and she had to have room to check her husband’s injuries.

Tokal’s pets crooned at her softly as she stepped over them, and she muttered quick thank-yous to them as she passed. She studiously avoided looking at Rakkal’s face as she fiddled with the supplies on the bedside table, and then tugged at and fussed with the bandages around his arms and chest until he sighed, fed up with her, and grabbed her wrists in one long-fingered hand.

She scowled into the middle-distance above his belly, refusing to look at him. He sighed again, and then shifted so he could hold her hands properly with both of his. She tugged at his hold even though she knew it was futile, and then moved her glare to his face.

He beat her to speech. “I’m healing _fine,_ you batty old witch. Lay down.”

She pulled her lips back at him, showing off her teeth. She snapped at the air once before answering him. “I am not the one who almost died. _Again._ I will lay down when I want to.”

What had slipped her mind about her husband was that he could be merciless when the occasion called for it - or when he _deemed_ the situation called for it.

“No, you didn’t almost die - but your loa _did._ Sit before you fall, priestess,” he ordered, eyes hard and pitiless as they bored into her. “Or did you _forget?”_

She fell more than she sat, her rear only landing on the bed and not the floor because of how Rakkal pulled at her as her legs gave out. Her heart bucked and her lungs seized for a dizzying moment, and then she caught herself, calming her mind again, focussing on the warmth of Rakkal’s hands around hers.

“I had not _forgotten,”_ she hissed, holding onto his hands tightly enough she could feel their bones creak. She hadn’t forgotten - she had set it aside. She would deal with it _later,_ when her mate was not bleeding from cursed wounds and his siblings were not exhausted and one of her best friends in this life was not curled up in a ball on the balcony so he could hide from the world under his devilsaur’s chin.

But Rakkal was a monster when he needed to be, one that could dig its fingers into where it hurt the worst and _twist._ “Isn’t it part of a priestess’ duty to grieve for her loa if he falls? You’d think that would go double if she and her family helped kill him.”

_“I did **not-**”_ But oh, she _had._ She had healed her family as they had torn Hir’eek to pieces, she had cast hex after curse on him to weaken his blows, slow his movement, wrack his bones with agony. But he - he had not been - “He was not _my loa_ anymore!” she burst out, and then she gasped, and with that one inhale all her walls shattered.

She sobbed, uncontrollable and messy, and Rakkal had her pulled into his chest before the first tears hit the furs. She hit him, fist landing squarely in the center of one of the worst gashes across his chest, and he only grunted before muttering apologies into her hair. It was a pitiful effort to return the pain he’d given her - and unfair, as the damage he’d done her was intended to _heal, _not harm, no matter how much of a prick it made him. She pressed her wet face into his bandages and held onto him as he shushed and soothed her.

She didn’t know how long they rocked each other before the bed creaked. She lifted her head to catch Ren’jai groggily crawling up to join them, entirely unconcerned with having been caught. Behind her was Zulk’eta, barely more awake than she was. The two of them curled up around her legs, and that seemed to be some silent signal. Taz’rin loped over to join them, making Rakkal chuckle as he wedged himself between Rakkal and the stone wall. Za’tuli wondered how he got past the raptors until Tokal sat down at the small of her back and then huddled on his side, his spine pressing bonily into hers, his hands dangling off the bed to pet his raptors.

She sniffled, and jerked as she heard it echoed above her head. Eyes wide, she turned her head to see Rakkal was crying, too - quieter and gentler, but just as heartfelt as she was. But he waved her off when she made to check the cut she’d hit, and tugged her back down to him instead, wriggling his leg under his sister’s body to tangle it with hers.

The bed groaned alarmingly every time someone shifted, but she let it be. The Darkspear had long since proven that proximity to each other sped up their recovery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DARKSPEAR PUPPYPILES AND HEALING-CUDDLES FOR EVERYONE!  
Fun fact: this was super fun to write for me bc I just kept imagining Taz'rin sulking in the background bc he isn't allowed on the bed.


	30. Day 31: Embrace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She slid into his arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY.

She slid into his arms, sticky with blood and sweat, and he leaned his weight into her as they slid into the old motions - heads tilting, faces pressing tight to each other’s necks, avoiding tusks out of long-practiced habit. Her arms slid around his back, palms pressing warm and wet to the backs of his shoulders. He folded his arms around her, on the outside by default - always - by virtue of being longer.

They rocked in place, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out who had started it this time, or remember who had started that part of this little ritual of theirs originally. But it comforted him, and he knew it comforted her, and so he kept it up when her legs gave out, firming his grip to keep her standing. He drew in a deep breath and was relieved that she smelled only of exhaustion under other-people’s-blood and caked-on layers of magic, poultice, and herbs.

She nuzzled back at him, fingers tapping tiredly on his back to tell him she was _fine, stop worrying,_ and she didn’t say a word but he heard it clear-as-day anyways. Her voice was always in the back of his head. He squeezed her tighter for a moment, just-this-side of crushing, and she wheezed at him in reproach. He felt her grin against his skin, echoing his own.

He shuffled them backwards, half-dragging her, thinking fondly of the days when they were younger and he was still taller-enough that he could just hold tight and stand up straight and lift her off the ground. He could still lift her, and worked to keep that up, but he didn’t trust his limbs enough after the hours of fighting. His heel-toe knocked into a stone he’d seen earlier, and he groaned lowly as he sunk back onto it. She was dragged along with him, neither willing to let go, and she grumbled contentedly as he moved her legs for her so she could straddle his lap without bangign her knee into rock.

He could feel the muscles in her back twitching under his hands, and his calves jumped as if in sympathy. Even his _feet_ were shaking as they settled against each other in the middle of the aftermath, stripped of armor but not yet washed. He could feel the blood drying her skin to his fur, and if he’d had the energy he would’ve winced at his near-future, prying free of the mess. But it was less-than-nothing as far as a consequence went, and he only hugged her to him and rocked, start-and-stop, as she made noises-like-words at him and he hummed back in answer.

Wordless conversations and post-battle embraces. Closeness and comfort. His tired mind flitted over things randomly as he fought sleep for just a little bit longer. He liked their habits - liked the simplicity of most of them, liked that they were _theirs._ Most of all, he liked that they meant they were still alive, had-been-alive for so long that they’d made these little shortcuts to each other. 

She pulled back before he did, and his chin slid off her shoulder and hit his chest before he was really aware she’d moved at all. She laughed at him and he joined her. He was just about to lift his head when he felt her muscles flex under his hands, purposeful, and then he didn’t even have time to tense before she had sat up - the tacky mess between them taking a good amount of his fur along with her.

He yelped, swatting at her, and she laughed again as she danced backwards. Another habit of theirs - her dancing in and out of his reach, ever since that day on the beach. He smiled at the thought even as he hauled himself to his feet to fulfill his part of it, chasing after her like a zombie as she fumbled and stumbled away from him, exhausted giggles calling him forward. 

He knew she’d lead him to water, to clean them both. Then would come clothing, if they felt like it, and a meal, or possibly just a soft enough place to lie down until they had the energy to eat. At some point, she would badger him about stretching out so he didn’t cramp, and he’d return the favor by pinning her in place so her could massage the knots out of her shoulders.

He trailed along behind her, thinking about habits, until they were by the water’s edge. He grinned at her, wide and sharp. She didn’t move quickly enough to dodge him as he lunged, sending them both into their bath with a splash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To quote a medieval monk - "thank god, thank god, and again THANK GOD". its over! its OVER. *sobs quietly*  
....and now nano. possibly. someone kill me.  
Ty so much to everyone that's read and commented it made this hell of having to write every day worth it <3
> 
> Fun fact: this purposefully has no set timeframe because it has literally happened EXACTLY like this at least 10 times between vanilla and BfA and will definitely happen again.


End file.
